HOW BIG IS GOD?

By Clinton White

The earth is over 24,000 miles around. If the sun in our solar system could be hollowed out and filled with globes the size of the earth, it would hold 1,300,000! Our sun is only one of millions of stars in the universe and nowhere near the largest. The superstar Antares would hold 36 million of our suns.

How big is God?

We live on a speck called earth--a tiny dot in a galaxy called the Milky Way. There are millions of stars in our galaxy. It takes light 100,000 years to cross our galaxy and light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. Roughly six trillion miles a year. Keep that figure in mind when you look at the following fact about God's creation. Scientists can see, with powerful telescopes, other galaxies as far as two million light years away. They believe that the universe contains billions of such galaxies.

Through the development of radio telescopes, astronomers have discovered distant quasars. These are a type of galaxy. Signals have reached the delicate instruments from as far as fifteen billion light years away!

How big is God?

It is no wonder to me that a scientist working at the Hayden Planetarium in New York said, "I don't know any atheists among professional astronomers."

We do not have any mental frame of reference to deal with such immensity. A cosmos so huge that light speeds on a journey of more than fifteen billion years to span its inconceivable dimensions. We simply cannot take it in!

If the bigness of creation is so hard to grasp, what about the bigness of the Creator?

A family was spending a few nights in a summer cottage. Dad and Mom slept on the bottom bunk and daughter Janie had the top bunk. A storm came sweeping suddenly through the forest. Branches groaned, the wind screamed, thunder rumbled and lightning struck not far from the cabin.

Janie cried, "Daddy, I'm scared!"

"It's all right, dear," the father said. "God is right there with you."

Silence from the upper bunk.

Then another blast of thunder, and a white flash of lightening.

A little tousled head peered over the rim of the bunk and a quivering little voice said, "Daddy, you get up here with God. I want to come down there with Mommy."

A man I know in Boston said his little girl cried out during a storm and he answered from his bedroom, "Don't be afraid, God is with you." And the girl shouted back, "I want somebody in here with skin on 'em!"

That child uttered the heart cry of all humanity! We live in a jungle with prowling predatory beasts. Men with blood on their teeth plot ghastly wars. Genocidal ovens ate the flesh of six million Jews. The atomic dragon ate 100,000 Japanese men, women and children. That dragon is getting hungry again!

Crime, racial hatred, famine, injustice, cancer, pain, death! "Oh, God, we want to know You! Where are You? We want to see You!

"We cannot take comfort from knowing the vastness of Your creation. We are afraid! We are told that You are here, but You are invisible. We are told, 'Don't fear, God is with you!' God! Please, God . . . we want someone with skin on them!"

Read the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Watch Jesus in action. Hear Him speak. You will begin to comprehend that God has answered our plea.

God did send Someone "with skin on 'em"!

The Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us!" (Selected portions from John 1.)

Jesus said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9).

How big is God?

You will see that He is big enough to forgive the grimiest, cruelest sin. He is big enough to hear the prayers of people who are considered by men to be the offscouring of the world.

He did not walk with the princes and kings but made His place with the poor. He holds in high esteem human beings that are scorned and ignored by men of prestige. Scripture says, "The common people heard Him gladly" (Mark 12:37).

His hands touched rotting lepers' flesh. His praise fell on the widow who offered her mite. His heart went out to a woman, shamed, taken in adultery, encircled by heartless legalistic wolves who desired her death. They slunk like whipped dogs when His wisdom pierced their souls with, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8:7).

How big is God?

Big enough to let men scourge His back, spit in His face, pluck His beard, put a reed in His hand, a crown of thorns on His head . . . and dance around Him in mockery.

Big enough to let men hang Him on a cross between two felons. Big enough to bleed, suffer and say, "Father, forgive them!"

How big is God?

Big enough to roll the stone away from that borrowed tomb and swallow death in victory! When the Son of God came striding from the place of the dead, a new day was born. Death, the king of terrors, was broken and defeated!

Now, for all people everywhere, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

We may have our heartaches and afflictions, our days of loneliness or pain; our pilgrimage on this earth will have its stormy days . . . but for those who keep looking toward that light, a hope spurs them on and a joy lightens their burdens.

How big is God?

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).