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God. Should we fear him? He's creator of all things.
"In Him We Live And Move And Exist . . ."
Art Thompson
Who is God?
Just how great is he?
A few days ago, I read with considerable interest . . . no, actually, my heart started to beat very fast and my breath came in quick short gulps, as I read something that . . .
Well, let me start over.
Since I was a kid, I used to ponder great things. Things that were impossible for me ever to know, I imagined.
I was stricken by the universe, stars, comets, the moon, the solar system, all those things. I was also greatly interested in astrophysics. Einstein fascinated me, even though I understood very little of what he talked about in the realm of relativity of things, and in astrophysics. But someone told me that Albert Einstein couldn't even balance his own checkbook - so I thought there may be some hope for me. I couldn't, either!
However, I was so interested that I would have liked very much to have been an astronomer or an astrophysicist - or just a plain physicist, for that matter.
But, I grew up in a small town and was poor. We never traveled more than about 100 miles from home until my last year of high school. We just didn't know much of what was "out there" in the world. I had no idea that people could earn their livelihoods looking through telescopes. I didn't know that people actually got paid for thinking about the universe, about time, matter, and such. Had I known, it may have changed my life. But most likely, if it had changed mine, whatever I might have done wouldn't have changed your life in any perceivable way.
But I did have a theory.
A scientific theory.
I didn't know it at the time, but that's what it was.
I believed the bible. I also believed science.
I also believed - and still do - that the bible and science are both truth. Generally speaking, they're just truth about different kinds of things. And both being truth, they will agree on all points they share in common.
I looked for scientific things in the bible.
From Job:
He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. (Job 26:7)
Also from the prophet, Isaiah:
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. (Isaiah 40:22)
That is what is called "pre-scientific"! It had been written in our bibles long before science "discovered" it.
For the many centuries that mankind lived, believing the earth was flat and riding on the back of a gigantic turtle, swimming in some nameless ocean - there it was in our bible.
The earth was round. And it just "hangs" in space - literally on nothing.
I was also fascinated when I learned that our solar system is a part of the Milky Way galaxy.
I remember when I was just a little guy, my dad would lie on the ground looking up at the night sky. I'd lie beside him when I'd see him doing that, because he'd point out things to me. Things I'd strain to see. That man in the moon. He'd point and point, making graceful, sweeping arcs in the air with his finger. "See, there're the man's eyes. Here's his nose, and under that, his smile."
I'd strain and strain, and look and look.
I never did see a man there.
Then he'd say, "OK. If you look at it another way, you can see the faces of a man and a woman kissing."
Now, I've never heard that in any scientific theory. I never did see the man and woman kissing either.
When I couldn't see the man nor the couple, he'd turn my attention to a light streak across the night sky. "That's the Milky Way," he'd say in a hushed, reverent voice.
He'd explain that the great Milky Way was just an uncountable number of stars, stretching across our sky. There are so many that they look like milk spilled out up there.
I was just fascinated and awed.
I still am.
Paul at the Aeropagus, where the world's "wisest men" "hung out", in the "seat of all learning", Athens, Greece:
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. "For in him we live and move and have our being."
As some of your own poets have said, "We are his offspring."
Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone - an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:23-31)
"For in him we live and move and have our being." I like it better translated as, "For in him we live and move and are." Or still better: "Only in him do we live. Only in him do we move. And only in him do we exist."
Then, as one of his followers, John, wrote:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:1-5 )
What strikes me here as John speaks of Jesus (as the Word), he informs us that: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Then, from Colossians 1:15 through 20:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Another of his followers, Paul, restates that Jesus was the one who created all things, but in a critical thought said, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Wow!
I don't know whether that has the same effect on you that it does on me, but to me the only word I can think of is "awesome"!
Is Jesus important to you or me?
Should he be?
If he were to stop doing what he is doing, all things would cease to exist. Everything would just stop being!
Is that important?
I look again with fresh eyes at the night sky.
Scientists tell us that the universe is several billions of years old. I don't know whether or not that's accurate, but it's probably close enough for an estimate. They could be off by a few hundred million years, I guess. After all, what if it's only hundreds of thousands of years old?
The idea we're talking about is still the same.
Jesus, as Creator of all things still lives. Our major evidence is that all things still "hold together"! All things still are! All things still exist!
He is the "holder-together" of it all.
That tells me some things that stagger my imagination and make me dizzy with the thoughts.
He is larger than the universe! ("In him we live, and move, and are." "In him, all things hold together.")
As creator, he is older than the universe!
That impresses me. Does that impress you!
When I started writing this, I was stumbling over trying to explain something I read the other day. It was just tumbling out and was getting all jumbled up!
What I read was that scientists now believe they have discovered evidence that the size of the universe is infinite! That it literally has no end - no outer boundary at all. It just goes on and on and on. Never ending. Never having an "edge"!
Our God is bigger than even that! Jesus, our Creator, is even bigger and older than what he created.
And you and I are standing in his presence.
Now.
Yesterday.
Tomorrow.
How should we feel?
Defiance?
Should I wonder if he's real? Wonder if he really exists at all?
Should I wonder if he is God?
Fear?
Awe?
Reverence?
There's no place to hide! No where we can go that he is not already there.
Does that bother you?
All he needs to do is just let go. Everything - you, I, the earth, moon, sun, all stars, every galaxy - everything we can imagine and everything we can't imagine as well - would cease to be. It would go back to the nothingness from which it came.
Is that power?
Should we fear that?
Should we fall down on our faces and surrender ourselves completely to whatever he wants of us?
You had better believe it!
That's what he wants of each of us, actually. He wants you and me to surrender totally to him all that we are, all that we have, all we can ever imagine. To recognize that he is in control. That he has total and complete power over us. He wants our reverence, our awe.
But, he also is a loving God.
He wants our love in return. And he loves us. He wants us to accept that love.
More next time.
~ Art