“‘Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘At last.’
The Great Lion rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all around her. She gazed up into the large wise face.
‘Welcome, child,’ he said.
‘Aslan,’ said Lucy, ‘you’re bigger.’
‘That is because you are older, little one,’ answered he.
‘Not because you are?’
‘I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.’”
-The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian
“Am I not both a God nearby and a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? Do I not fill both heaven and earth?” -Jeremiah 23:23-24
“Dear God, my Grandpa says you were around when he was a little boy. How far back do you go?” -Dennis, 4 years old
A BIG QUESTION
How big is God?
Seems like an unfathomable, unanswerable question, doesn’t it?
Well, in a way, it is.
The full “size” and scope of God is truly beyond our comprehension.
Which is a good thing.
The fact that my comprehensive ability has a ceiling is a clue that there might exist a Mind with a higher “ceiling” than my own (Isaiah 55:9).
But does this mean that everything about God’s size is incomprehensible?
Not exactly.
The problem is that we’re asking the wrong question.
When we ask how big something is, we’re referring to its physical properties. We usually mean, “how tall is it? How heavy is it? How wide is it?” We’ll even inquire about its properties in relation to time by asking “How old is it?”
The problem with God is that He exists outside of both the dimensions of time and physicality. In other words, unlike us, God is not limited by anything physical such as a body, nor is he bound by time. So, He can’t be measured in feet, inches, pounds, or years.
God was not physically birthed, nor does God grow old. God has always been.
As he said to one of his children long ago, “I am that I am.” (Ex. 3:14). In other words...
“I am self-created, self-sustaining, and the only thing responsible for my existence is me.”
Is your head starting to hurt yet? Maybe this will help…
Even though God can’t be measured using physical metrics, it might help us to get a vision of God’s “size” by measuring the size of all that He created.
THE BIG-NESS OF THE UNIVERSE
(Now, please enjoy “nerding out” with me for just a brief moment)
The first documented records of astronomical observations date back to the Assyro-Babylonians around 1000 BCE, who had built up knowledge of the celestial bodies and recorded their periodic motions.[1]
In July of 1609, English astronomer Thomas Harriot made the first recorded observations of the Moon through a telescope. This was a month before Galileo[2], who then discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter. Galileo also found that the telescope showed many more stars than are visible with the naked eye.[3]
So you might say that, by the 17th century, we had a firm conviction that what we call the sky is not, in fact, a big blue dome, but rather more of a seemingly limitless expanse, a vast ocean of constellations, planets, stars, comets, and more.
And then, in 1961, the Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first person to swim in that ocean.
But given what we now know about the depth of Outer Space, Gagarin barely dipped his toe on the Cosmic shoreline, commenting later, “I could have gone on flying through space forever.”[4]
Did you know that Neptune, the last planet in our Solar System, (RIP Pluto) is 2.9 BILLION miles from Earth? This means that if you departed on a Boeing 747 out of LAX headed towards Neptune, it would take you approximately 660 years to get to the edge of our Solar System.
And that’s just our Solar System.
Did you know that there are roughly 3,200 solar systems (including ours) in our galaxy?
And if we zoom out just one click more, there is (wait for it) somewhere between 200 Billion and 2 Trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
(Take a second to truly breathe that in)
Would you like some extra-strength Advil now?
As Aslan the Lion wisely counseled Lucy, “Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
A GOD WHO IS FAR-OFF, NEARBY, AND EVERYWHERE IN BETWEEN
In the Bible, the phrase “Heaven & Earth” is uttered far more frequently than “Heaven & Hell.” Earth, therefore, was Heaven’s appropriate counterpart, not Hell.
In the book of Jeremiah, God rhetorically asks…
“Am I not both a God nearby and a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? Do I not fill both heaven and earth?”
So it appears that Heaven and Earth, as opposed to Heaven and Hell, go so well together because they both are dwelling places of God. In fact, Hell, should you choose to believe it, is the only known reality in the entire cosmos that is completely void of God’s presence.
Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning observed, “Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes”[5]
So, God is very big, not because of his physical mass, but because of the amount of space he is able to inhabit.
This means that the size and scope of God will not be discovered by asking, “how big is God,” but, ultimately, by asking, “How much real estate does God occupy?”
In other words, where is God, currently?
Is that something you’d be interested in knowing?
HOW BIG IS GOD….TO YOU?
In a prior post, I explained how vision fuels everything we do. A strong vision will create in us a passion to see that vision become a reality. This passion will then carry us towards re-arranging our schedules and seeking out the necessary means to see that vision actualized.
So, dear reader, I invite you to join me on a 4-week journey of Re-Visioning.
It’s a journey to locate God. To seek Him out. To learn His favorite “hang-outs.” To discover His Big-ness. And to entertain the possibility that He might just be someone who wants to be found.
So until next time, I want to leave you with one question…
How big is God…to you?
In other words, if you believe in God, where do you picture Him at this very moment?
Is the God you have in your mind a senior citizen residing somewhere up in the sky eating grapes and lying on a pillowy cloud? Is your God more of the “Romantic” God, the one who lives in your heart? Is your God waiting for you in some sanctuary, cathedral, or worship hall this Sunday?
Does your God come and go as he pleases? Does he show up only when you summon him?
How much real estate does your God occupy?
I pray that, through this series, you will begin to think a little differently about where God is and what He is doing. I pray that God’s size and scope will expand in your mind.
And I pray that, as young Lucy’s Lion grew with every passing year, yours will too.
Be well, friends.
-Andrew