Vast Difference

Hey, Y'all,

So as promised, we're back discussing Philip Yancey's book "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" and today's quote addresses some queries we've all no doubt had sometime...

All my friends have some similarities to me and some differences...Every relationship spawns a kind of dance between "the self" and "the other." How much more so with a holy, ineffable God, who both lives here with us as well as in the realm of spirit?

I am overwhelmed by the vastness of God, the imbalance or asymmetry of any creature's relationship to such a being. "Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could, it would not be God of which we speak," said Saint Augustine. True. How strange to think that we who barely comprehend ourselves are approaching a God we cannot possibly comprehend...

In prayer I am approaching the creator of all that is, someone next to whom I feel immeasurably small. How can I do anything but fall silent in such presence? Moreover, how can I believe that anything I say matters to God?...

In one hand I hold the truth of God's vastness, and in the other hand I hold the truth of His desire for relationship, for intimacy with us...I gaze at the stars and marvel at the apparent insignificance of the entire human experiment; then I read the passage of scripture (and it is just one of many like it) that says that, just as a mother with her child, God "rejoices over us with singing." Only lately have I understood that it is the vast difference between God and us what allows this very capacity. God operates by vastly different rules. God's infinite greatness, which we expect to diminish us, in fact makes possible the closeness the we--and He--desire.

How amazing is that? His vastness, my tiny-ness, His interest, my disbelief, His insistence, my acceptance--and subsequent awakening (rebirth?) into a new and far better existence, right here, right now.

It is no wonder then that David wrote both

"When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you set in place, what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?"

and

"The Lord is my shepherd--I have everything I need."

You've been prayed for today...