God is big enough to have created everything visible and invisible in the entire universe, and small enough to have been conceived in the womb of a teenage girl.
As the Irish abbot, St. Columban, wrote: “God is everywhere in his immensity, and everywhere close at hand.”
I can noodle on concepts like this because I’m writing from South Florida where I can watch sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico from my chair on the beach sans schedules, demands, or time constraints.
Stay with me now. Astronomers tell us that we are 3 billion miles from Neptune, our most distant planet; a trip requiring 685,000 years in our most advanced spacecraft. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope, first launched in 1990, estimates that in our galaxy alone there are over 100 billion stars. The nearest one that lightens our days is a mere 93 million miles away. Observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft posit that our Milky Way galaxy is only one of at least 200 billion.
Cataloging such information catapults my fifteen centimeter long, three pound brain into catatonia. But I can conclude this much: the universe is really, really, BIG.
Now if you’re still with me, consider this. The act of creation wasn’t a “one and done”. God has never stopped creating; and he sustains everything he creates. The most recent census figures reveal a global population of 7,846,000,000. Concomitantly, with every hour that passes, 16,095 babies are born into this world while another 6,621 souls leave it to face a final accounting of their lives. That’s a lot of simultaneous creating, sustaining, and judging!
Unimagined Multitasking
Now add some divine multitasking. Who can count the number of unceasing prayer requests from every nationality and language? The petitions for blessings? The litanies of thanksgiving? The heartfelt prayers of repentance and hope for forgiveness? The desire for a personal encounter? Not to mention the “Hound of Heaven” pursuing those 7.8 billion souls of his own volition with unrelenting love and his offer of rescue, salvation, and redemption. And we haven’t even begun to explore the granting of graces unexpected and undeserved.
By contrast, here’s the extent of my multitasking: seeing the sun shimmer on the surface of the waves, listening to music with my Bluetooth earbuds, feeling the gentle breeze along the shore and the warm sand between my toes. That’s about it.
No wonder philosophers use the phrase “Totally Other” when referring to God.
Over 2,700 years ago, the prophet Isaiah challenged his contemporaries with similar comparisons.
“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales; see, he takes up the isles like fine dust. Lebanon would not provide fuel enough, nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?
Isaiah 40: 12-18
In a way, we are considering the vastness of God’s creation; its breadth as it were. But what of its height, i.e., its beauty?
Philosopher theologian David Bentley Hart describes it this way: “Creation’s being is God’s pleasure, creation’s beauty God’s glory…It is delight that constitutes creation and so only delight can comprehend it, see it aright, understand its grammar.”
Christian therapist and author Dan Allender uses this image: “Creation is like a complex and compelling tapestry that is woven with delicate and bold artistry. The more you stand before it, the more you see the craft and care; yet the whole is more than one can take in without becoming dizzy and disoriented.”
And yet – Scripture tells us that this entire created order is temporary. “For the present form of this world is passing away. (1 Cor 7:31b)”, only to be replaced by a new heavens and new earth that will NEVER pass away. “But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home (2 Pet 3:13).”
An Unfair Comparison
Before we get caught up in imaginings about an unending creation of inconceivable immensity and beauty, however, let’s return briefly to the opening contrast between God’s greatness and smallness.
How can the God who rules over such a vast and beautiful universe be the same God who knows each of us intimately and actually dwells within us? We could refer to it as the depth of his creation.
The Psalmist was baffled with the notion of such knowledge: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely (Ps. 139: 1-4).”
Even more to the point, Jesus told his followers, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them (John 14:23).”
If all of this raises more questions than answers, take comfort in Isaiah again. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable (Isaiah 40: 28).”
In other words (specifically my words), Hello? God is infinite! He doesn’t get tired creating; he doesn’t need a break from listening to prayer requests; he doesn’t take up physical space in the firmament or in our bodies. Searching our brains for a satisfying understanding of all of this is futile.
Tell that to the astronomers.
