“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:17-18 NIV)
As I was sitting on the beach last month, I grabbed a handful of sand and thought about this verse. It almost took by breath away. It was impossible to count the grains of sand so I emptied my hand and tried to count the grains left stuck to my palm. Again, it was impossible. Literally hundreds of grains were still clinging to my skin.
The Psalmist is poetically saying it is impossible to grasp the immensity of God. Imagine a beach full of sand and realize the sum of His thoughts are greater than the grains making up that beach. Perhaps another way to illustrate this is to use the super computer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It can perform more than a quadrillion mathematical equations per second. God can easily do more. Imagine what it takes to hold a universe and all its components together operating in synch—a universe measured in size by the amount of time light can traverse distance in a year; a universe in which the earth is a tiny dot. Doesn’t it take your breath away?
God is really, really big. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of that fact. As my wife and I walked along the beach with the countless grains of sand under our feet, we watched in awe of the ocean waves, one after another after another, knowing that underneath those waves were countless varieties of life. And a visit to any public aquarium will give an up close view of many of those species—countless varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes. And this is only the ocean. Think of what’s in the rivers and the lakes. Think of what is on the land—in the mountains, on the plains, and in the desert.
I could go on and on. Yet, I would never come close to adequately describing the breadth of God’s creation. It is just too big. He’s just too big.
Today, take a minute or more to contemplate how big God really is. It is a humbling, yet exciting exercise when you realize that humongous God knows you and loves you.
© Jim Musser 2014
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