I’m small compared to God. I’m more than small―I’m so infinitely small compared to an infinite God that the shortness of my life, the size of my body, the reach of my arm, the capacity of my memory, and every other measure of my being weigh less than a grain of sand. Less than an atom. Less than a particle, a quark.
And God is so big. I have always known, in theory, that God is bigger than I am, but how often do I forget that he is not only bigger than me, but bigger than the Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the universe? It would be astounding enough to know a God with absolute control over this planet, but our God reigns over everything created―that is, everything other than him.
When I consider this God whose mind is unbelievably vast, to know the stars by name; whose sight is unimaginably transcendent, to see all things everywhere; whose being is so different from ours, to be outside of time, immutable; when I consider this God whom I dare to write about, I begin to feel my smallness. I am painfully insufficient to presume to know the Creator God. His ways are not my ways; his thoughts are not my thoughts. Who am I, then, to try to know him?
But I am also struck by God’s choice to create us in his image, that we would be relational not only with each other but with him. And I am astounded by God’s choice to be born into the world he created, taking on the true flesh and blood of humanity. How can the infinite, the immutable, the transcendent freely associate with the limited, the changeable, and the temporary? Yet that is what he did.
This is how we know God: not because he is inherently knowable or attainable, but because he wants to be known by us. Not because he exists for us, but because we were created with the very purpose of knowing him. Not because he is lowly, and not because we are great, but because he is gracious.
The thought struck me at once in a moment of joy and comfort. But perhaps not surprisingly, the Bible has already put my thoughts into words. Listen to Psalm 8:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!