20 November 2019
God is so amazing, so other, so mind-boggling.
On my best day, God is bigger than my best thoughts.
On my better day the God I think about, I know about, is only part of the shadow of who He truly is.
I do not even scratch the surface as the saying goes.
His ways are way above mine, his thoughts way higher, his abilities way more miraculous than I can ever imagine. His love is way deeper than I would go, than I would love, that I would even comprehend.
None can compare to Him.
Job, Paul the apostle, Isaiah the prophet all thought the same.
In Romans 11:34, “For who has known the mind of the Lord. Or who has been His counsellor?” NRSV
Job 11:7-10, “Can you discover the depths of God. Can you by searching, discover the limits of the Almighty, ascend to His heights, extend to His widths, and comprehend His infinite perfection?”AMP
Isaiah 55:9, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” NRSV
How high are the heavens above the earth?
If you go by today’s understanding of ‘the heavens’ – meaning the totality of the Universe outside of Earth- they are approx 46 billion light years higher.
So our sight cannot even acknowledge a smidgen of what we see of the height of the heavens from the Earth.
Our thoughts are nothing, nought, zero in comparison to God’s. He knows our thoughts and everyone else on the planet all at the same millisecond of time.
I remember seeing a scene in the movie Bruce Almighty where a human called Bruce was made God (had godly abilities) for a week. All these prayer requests came in on a computer and Bruce was flabbergasted at how many came in, how could he cope with them all? He was so stressed. He ended up answering yes to everyone!
Whereas Our God does not stress, there is no worry. All is under His Authority.
How good and great and Holy is God and our words, our thoughts on these topics do not come close to Who He is! We just do not have the right human vocabulary to describe Our God.
Think of the best of the best that has ever walked the Earth with the exception of Jesus (for He is God). They and their thoughts, their ideas do not come close to God’s shoelace.
God is actually very “unreasonable” because we cannot humanly reason Him with Our Brain. He is beyond Our Reason. He is beyond all things for He created all things. No one created Him. He always existed.
Don’t put God in a box. We often do. We try to put Him into our image of Him. We see one or some facets of Him and think it is All. We are so wrong.
This knowledge of God for some is of no interest. Why is that? Is it because they have not yet encountered this magnificent, pure, all loving, all gracious all merciful God? Are they thinking along human ways and thoughts and if they can’t comprehend a God with their brain, they reject Him?
I cannot see air, but I can see the proof of the existence of air. With watching the wind move the air particles. Performing experiments that colour the air particles, so they can be seen, by inflating a balloon and seeing the change in its appearance. … So too we can see the effect of God through the change in people. Through healing, miraculous abilities, change in mindset, change in circumstances etc.
When you see with these NEW eyes, these spiritual eyes you are never the same, for God has that effect on people. Remember how some of the disciples were recognized by ‘they have been with Jesus.’ Something about them, how they spoke, how they behaved, how they loved showed people that Jesus had had an effect upon them, changed them.
I love how Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, unsure of himself, unsure of his direction in life still trusted in God, knowing God walked with him.
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you….”
God looks at our heart, our attitude,
“…and I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils.
Extract from thoughts in solitude.
Oh, what Faith to trust in the Almighty God who knows all things, is all things, created all things and not trust our brains to work it out, or think we have worked it out.
Let us have Faith like that! For we can trust in this Amazing All-encompassing God.
May these jottings from my journal inspire you to believe in and fall in love with Christ- the hope of the world, as stated in Jeremiah 17:7, ‘Blessed is the man who believes and trusts in and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confident expectation is the Lord!’
Love always
Rosemary