C is for Creator

How Big is God?
We'd better approach this question indirectly. Start with his handiwork. The Rocky Mountains are big, magnificently impressive, but on the face of the globe mere pimples. And how many millions of such globes would fit into the sun? Even that gargantuan sun is an average star, a middle class functionary in one vast galaxy among--how many? (Carl Sagen: don't answer.) Lord only knows, I'm sure.

This approach comes from God's hymners of antiquity, who sometimes sang of God's bigness in relation to his handiwork. They did so to remind their hearers in a helpful way that God can handle the problem at hand, whether it is an unstoppable enemy or their own domestic injustice. How big is God? God is the one who stretched out the heavens, they said. God's arm's-breadth must exceed even the width of the sky. Being so gigantic, the terrorizing troops of any merciless conqueror would be smaller than toys in God's huge hands. Good news, if God is on your side!

Think how 20th century astronomers can help our theological imagination try to respond to the question of God's bigness. They know the stars well (though not as well as God who actually, unlike Abraham, can count them and, what's more, calls them all by name--Psalm 147). Astronomers tell us that in the starry night sky light-years separate any two near-by stars. The night heaven can only be described as astronomically big. So how great is the arms-breadth of God who stretched out that heaven? How small would the earth look on the tip of God's finger?

This puts you and me in perspective, or even per-speck-tive. "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is man that you should be mindful of him, the son of man that you should seek him out?" (Psalm 8) By inspiration this singer sang a duet pairing God's fearsome bigness with his "seeking out" human beings (surely with a magnifying glass). In this duet God's bigness, while awesome, is not off-putting. This is key, for the bigness of God is a trial for our faith. God's bigness is good news if we are sure God is for us, as he is in Christ, seeking us out. Otherwise, big is bad: just ask Pharaoh or the prophets of Baal (if you can find them).