L.P.A. Yesterday, I sat down to watch a movie with my two sons. Now when I say that I sat to watch this movie, that might not be entirely correct, seeing that I had watched it before. What I really was doing was watching my sons watch the movie. It was important to me that the message it was trying to portray was passed across. In summary, the main character in the movie (an elephant) while going about his daily routine in the jungle, came upon a speck. Yes, thats right. A speck. He believed that he had heard a sound coming from within it. A tiny tiny sound - sort of like the sound a mosquito makes in your ear as it flies by. Because of that sound, the elephant decided that there had to be someone or a group of someones living in or on that speck and that they must be protected. He was right. But the minuscule people whose world the speck was, had not the slightest clue how fragile their existence was. To them, their world was massive. And it was absolute. It was inconceivable to suggest that as big as their world was to them, it was almost invisible in the other world. Such was the Lilliputian nature of that world, that the very slightest breeze in the wrong direction, a sneeze - a sniff even- from the bigger world within which it hovered, would obliterate all its inhabitants and none would be the wiser. It is a powerful message this one. When I first watched it years ago, it appealed to my highly flammable imagination. I was fascinated by the notion that there could be worlds existing within worlds. It would be almost a decade before I realized that this message was not an idea. It was true. And I was living in it. Thats right. In the tiny speck. There is an image of the earth. Shot from deep space by the Voyager thirteen years after it launched (i.e. 4 billion miles away from the earth itself). It is probably the grainiest image you will ever see. You know, those ones you delete the instant you see them because you cant make any sense of them? Exactly. This is one of those images. Only, this image is a panoramic composite of 60 images, each of them 640,000 pixels, each of those pixels taking five and a half hours to transmit and each of the sixty images, months to make it back to earth. The image is called The Pale Blue Dot. In it, you see what appear to be rays of light. And inside one of those thin bands of light - if you squint hard enough or zoom in sufficiently - you will see a tiny blue dot. The rays of light are the sun and the dot is - you guessed it - earth. As massive as this world we live in is, it is a mote of dust suspended in space, illuminated by a single ray of sunlight. If you havent started feeling tiny yet, please allow me to assist. The sun around which Earth and her sisters orbit is approximately one million times the size of the earth. It is a giant. It would take approximately 960,000 earths to fill up the sun. Scientists estimate that, for any one power company to run the sun, it would take the Gross National Product (GNP) of the United States, 7 MILLION years to do so for a SINGLE SECOND. And it has been in existence for billions of years. As mind blowing as the sun is, it is infinitesimal when put beside behemoths like Betelgeuse, Mu Cephel and Canis Majoris. Our sun is merely one star in the midst of BILLIONS of stars like it within the Milky Way Galaxy and the Milky Way Galaxy is one galaxy within a multitude of galaxies, numbering in the hundreds of billions, in the known universe. Psalm 8:4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? The now famous image - The Pale Blue Dot - was not taken by angels, but by human beings like you and I. When I saw it, it struck me, as it undoubtedly struck them, how teeny tiny small we are. I reflected on the many many times I had shuffled in and shuffled out of worship meetings, standing up with reluctance, wondering what the big deal was while muttering one or two words as if I was doing God a favour. I wondered how many times the angels must have shaken their heads in amazement at my complete ignorance. I marveled at the patience of a God Whose power is such that I and my entire species could be annihilated at His merest whim. A God Who condescended to don the attire of flesh and walk among men. Who allowed Himself to be beheld by mere mortals. The God Who restrained untold legions of heavens armies all alert, all present, all waiting at the foot of the cross from which He hung. All they would need would be an imperceptible command from Him to demonstrate to mankind that day, just how powerful He truly was and lay waste to those who mocked Him. But the command would not come. The entirety of creation watched Him die. And in that moment, the insignificant became significant. As tiny as we are, we are loved and prized by a God Who is Unmatched and Unparalleled. Our value is the value of the life blood of Jesus. Every drop of which was spilt to prove it. But we must NEVER forget where the value comes from. For should He so much as step away, it would all too quickly become apparent again just how tiny and inconsequential we are. These mammoth marvels that spin, orbit and revolve in what appears to be thin air, do so at the command of and for the exclusive pleasure of a Being so far out of the league of every one else as to boggle the mind. When He spoke them into existence, there was no need to repeat Himself. They have remained exactly as they should be from then till now. Such is the measure of His power. But as magnificent as they are, they are only teasers appetizers- sneak peeks - of what He is ABLE to do. He is capable of FAR more. They were placed there to stir up our curiosity. To strengthen our faith. To draw us closer. To tell us every day, that what we see is NOTHING compared to what we cannot see. It is my prayer that the awe and faith with which we must approach this Indescribable God will so fill our hearts today that there would be no room for anything else. And as we draw near to Him, may we be transformed until our eyes are empowered to see the invisible, our ears to hear the inaudible, our hands to touch the intangible. So be it in the Unrivaled Name of Christ Jesus our LORD.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 17:00:57 +0000
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