Ever have it that you've become so used to an idea it really doesn't faze you any more, doesn't really boggle your mind? Then something happens or you read something and the amazingness comes back and completely astounds you...
I had that this morning working through a lesson in Beth Moore's "Beloved Disciple" (on John). Here are a few excerpts that were refreshing, amazing, mind boggling, and astounding to me again this morning:
"Perhaps we've grown inordinately casual about the most overwhelming fact: God sent Jesus to the world.
"The Word of God delineates between on little planet He called Earth and the entire rest of the universe. We have no idea what is out there. What little science documents and hypothesizes makes Gensis 1:1 inconceivably impressive.
"Our solar system is in a galaxy called the Milky Way. 'Scientists estimate that there are more than 100 billion galaxies scattered throughout the visible universe. Astronomers have photographed millions of them through telescopes. The most distant galaxies ever photographed are as far as 10 billion to 13 billion light-years away. ... The Milky Way has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years. The solar system lies about 25,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way.'"
Psalm 147:4 says, "He determines the number of stars, and calls them each by name."
"Impressive, isn't it? But this gets even more impressive: in the beginning God created the sun, the moon, every single star, all their surrounding planets, and the earth. You and I have no idea what God's activities may have been elsewhere in the universe, but according to the Bible and as far as He wanted us to know, He picked out one tiny speck on which to build a world. Our world. And He picked it out so that when the time had fully come, He would send His Son...Perfectly placed in the universe with adequate distance from sun, moon, and stars to sustain human life, it was chosen for divine infiltration.
"Scripture doesn't tell us He loved the sun, and it is the most impressive among visible elements. Nor are we told He loved the stars, even though He knows each by name. John went out of his way, however, to tell us not just that God loved the world but that He so loved the world. In a universe so vast, so incomprehensible, why does God single out one little planet to so love? Beloved, absorb this into the marrow: because we are on it. As despicable as humanity can be, God loves us...
"Elohim is so huge. We are so small. Yet the vastness of His love--so high, so wide, so deep, so long--envelops us as the endless universe envelops a crude little planet God called Earth."
Praying that is an awe-inspiring and refreshing reminder for you today as well.
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