“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:17b-21 NIV)
In C.S. Lewis’ “Prince Caspian,” the second book in his “Chronicles of Narnia” series, Lucy, upon meeting Aslan on her second trip to Narnia, remarks that he is bigger. Aslan replies, “It is because you are older.”
As we age and mature, does our God get bigger or does He shrink? Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18:3), and that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children (Matthew 19:14). Of course, He was not talking about physically being a child, but having the trusting attitude and the imagination of a child.
Children are not doubters by nature; they just believe. And they trust. If Mom and Dad tell them there is a Santa Claus, they don’t doubt it. When a boy says he wants to be a firefighter when he grows up, he has no doubt that is what he will be. And they have wonderful imaginations. My neighbors’ children are always out in their yard having some battle or on some adventure. Children show little constraint in imagining a world far different than the one in which they are living.
It is amazing sometimes how we have such trust in the Lord as children, but then as we grow up, that trust diminishes. God shrinks instead of getting bigger. Or even as new believers, we are enthralled with the Lord’s power and mercy, but as we move along in the Christian life, we are less enthralled, less moved. He begins to shrink.
I think Lewis was trying to say through Aslan that as we grow older and mature, God is supposed to get bigger. We are to become even more enthralled with, more impressed by, and more imaginative with His power and mercy. And this requires that we resist both the natural tendency and societal pressure to “grow up” which means to put aside “fairytales” such as someone dying for sin and being raised from the dead, people being healed through other than medical means, trusting God to provide, and so on. We must recognize God is bigger and more powerful than what we could ever believe or imagine. This is why as we are growing older, He should be getting bigger, because it takes a lifetime, or more correctly an eternity, to fully grasp how big He really is.
Today consider, as you are growing older, is the Lord shrinking or getting bigger?
© Jim Musser 2012
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