When I consider Your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of Him, the son of man that you visit him? -Psalm 8:3-4, NKJV
That verse has been much on my mind of late–especially after seeing pictures taken from the Hubble space telescope and hearing the calculated size, distance, and heat intensity of various stars and black holes. We are so small. Our earth is so small. Even our sun is but a dust speck too small to be visible amid the galaxies. Yet God the Creator of all this has visited us–even bodily, in Christ’s incarnation: in the same tiny physical form He gave us, even through the whole process of human life from physical birth to physical death.
Amazing beyond comprehension.
But the God and Creator of the vast is also the God and Creator of the infinitesimally small. The more powerful we make our microscopes as well as our telescopes, the more mind-blowing the intricacies we see, in a cell, in a molecule, in an atom. And what beyond that, smaller yet, can we still not see?
I need to remember the LORD as the God of the small things as well as the God of the enormous. The enormous is important, because it puts me in my rightful place and helps make me glaringly aware of my relative insignificance in the grand workings of the Universe, my helplessness and weakness in the face of God’s overwhelming power. But I also need to see how much careful consideration and concern He gives to the tiniest of details within His giant realm—details so small I can’t even see them with a microscope’s aid. I need also to reflect on how, amazingly, He has involved Himself in the petty concerns of my little life, and on all the evidence I have of His intervening in it. I need to savor the truth that in the greatness of His wisdom and power, which extends in all directions toward both the vast and the miniscule, He sent me a Savior, and Counsellor, and Helper, in the shell of a human infant form. When I do, it sometimes doubles me over with gratitude and awe.
[For an awe-inspiring look at things I’ve been talking about, watch the whole series of Louie Giglio’s “How Great is Our God” presentation, on You Tube, starting with Part One here.]