How Big Is God

 In 2009 I bought a 1977 VW Bug.  Every fender was dented and it had no bumpers. Peeling paint fluttered in the wind.  It was on its last legs.  Its next stop, if not with me, would probably be the junk yard.  It might have been melted down for scrap metal and recycled as a Porsche. Who knows?

 But when I drove it, in spite of its rattles, it appealed to me. It was kind of like the Love Bug, Herby, begging for another chance.  So, I bought it on a nostalgic impulse and towed it home.  When I hooked it to my truck and pulled away from the house where I found it, the wife of its previous owner stood on the porch and applauded. She was happy to see it go, an eyesore removed from her driveway.  When I showed it to one of my friends, he asked if I found it at the bottom of a lake.  My wife is understanding and allows me these little follies, but made it clear I had to clean it up.

 I took it to a body shop where they took one look at it and said, “We don’t do that kind of work.”  But they pointed me to someone who did body work in his backyard and had experience with old VWs.  He walked around my bug, examined it carefully and announced, “I’m not afraid of it.”  That sealed the deal.  We painted it silver and named it Bullet.  I drove Bullet for 8 years, until we moved to Colorado and it refused to pass the emissions test. Old VW bugs are hard to kill.   

 The same year my VW bug was manufactured, NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 to explore the solar system and interstellar space.  Traveling at 39,000 mph it took 34 years for Voyager 1 to reach the edge of our solar system.  Although they have reached speeds fifty times faster than the fastest fighter jet, it will take them 70,000 years to reach the closest star. 

 One scientist put the size of the universe in perspective.  If our sun were the size of a grain of salt, he said, the orbit of the earth would be one inch in diameter.  And the closest star would be four miles away.

 When we look into the night sky it is filled with stars, seemingly close together.  But, in fact they are very, very far away.  There are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone and scientists estimate billions of galaxies in the universe.  If the cosmic universe is this big, how big is God?

 Shortly before Jesus was crucified, he prayed, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”  (John 17:24). The word for “world” in this statement is not the Greek word, “ges” from which we derive our words “geology, geography and geothermal.” It is the word “cosmos” indicating the “cosmic universe.”  When we think about the expanse of the cosmic universe, we get a small glimpse of His glory, and quickly realize that our finite minds are far too small to comprehend His majestic greatness.