Our God is BIG!

Psalm 97:1-6

The Lord reigns;
Let the earth rejoice;
Let the multitude of isles be glad!

Clouds and darkness surround Him;
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.

A fire goes before Him,
And burns up His enemies round about.

His lightnings light the world;
The earth sees and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.

The heavens declare His righteousness,
And all the peoples see His glory.

The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad, let the multitude of islands rejoice! Why? because God reigns! That's good news for us! OUR God reigns, not some other God, not any earthly president or king, but our GOD reigns! And our God is BIG!

I think we sometimes forget how big our God is. Remember, He is the Creator, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end. We tend to put God in human terms so that we can better understand Him, but we need to remember that God is not bound by our limitations and our weaknesses, He is as far above them as we can possibly imagine. Our God is not a God we can put in a box, or keep in control, He's not a tame God or a "safe" God. I love what Mr. Beaver says about Him (in the character of Aslan) in C.S. Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe:

"Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

I tell you, He's the King! Our God holds all things together. (Colossians 1:17) He holds everything from the invisible forces that keep the atoms of our bodies together to the galaxies and constellations in the heavens. In Job 38, God answers Job's questions about God's reasons for His actions by contrasting God's power and majesty with Job's. Here's a little snippet from that conversation:

Job 38:31-33
"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades,
Or loose the cords of Orion?
"Can you lead forth a constellation in its season,
And guide the Bear with her satellites?
"Do you know the (rdinances of the heavens,
Or fix their rule over the earth?


God is talking about star constellations here, and how He alone has the power to do with them as He pleases, in fact, He holds them and guides them! Here is a picture of the Pleiades star cluster that God is talking with Job about:

Just out of curiosity, can you hold that star cluster together? Can you even hold that star cluster? Can you even visit that start cluster? Obviously, the answer is no! You and I are not even specs of dust in comparison with that star cluster. But God, God holds that thing in His hand, and he binds it together with the forces of gravity and electricity and keeps it where He wants it to be. Wow are we small, but man is God big!

In case that doesn't do it for you, check out this verse:

Isaiah 40:12
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,
And marked off the heavens by the span,
And calculated the dust of the earth by the measure,
And weighed the mountains in a balance
And the hills in a pair of scales?

Our God has marked off the heavens with a span. That means that He takes His hand and holds it up, and the space between His finger and His thumb holds the whole universe. Do you know how big the universe is? Right now, estimates place the size of the universe at around 28 billion light years in diameter, we can never really know the actual size, so that's a small estimate, based on what we can see. A light year is 5,878,630,000,000 miles. So the estimated size of the universe is 28,000,000,000 X 5,878,630,000,000 miles wide at it's diameter. I'll let you do the math on that one.

Here's a picture of what the universe might look like were you to look at it the way that God does, by the span of your hand.

You can't find earth in that image, you can't even find our solar system, in fact, looking at this image, it would be near impossible to point out our galaxy, the Milky Way. The spots that look like stars are galaxies, and even clusters of galaxies! Bigger than our minds can comprehend. Our God holds THAT in the palm of His hand. We serve a BIG God.

When you think about how big our God is, and how small we are, it's pretty amazing that He would care about us isn't it?

Psalm 8:3-9
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!

The same God who made those stars and galaxies, and who measures the universe by the span of His hand, loves you enough that He came to earth and lived as a man, and died the death of a lowly criminal for YOU. The God who measures the universe in His hand became smaller than an atom in relation to the universe, and lived humbly, submitting to men, dying on a cross, so that you could have life in Him.

When you think about how big God is, doesn't it make your problems seem small? If God is that powerful, He can take care of the problems and struggles in my life can't He? Of course He can! How small are my problems in relation to the universe? And when God doesn't do things the way that I think they should be done, and I'm going through struggles or hardship, I need to realize that doesn't mean God can't handle it. It means He is handling it in exactly the way He wants to handle it. He is allowing things to happen the way that He wants them to be. He has the power to change every situation I am in, and if He doesn't it's because He is doing a work in my life, and His plans are infinitely better than mine.

The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad, let the multitude of islands rejoice! Why? Because God reigns! That's good news for us!

I'm glad that a God that loves me is in charge.