“As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space ‘twixt the marsh and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh -grass sends in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God.”

 “The Marshes of the Glen” by Sidney Lanier

 

Have you ever simply sat and contemplated the greatest of God? I would imagine that, if you are like me, you have in the past, but it’s not an everyday sort of thing. I mean, it is hard to do when there’s dinner to get on the table at the end of the day, or you’re late for an appointment because you’ve been sitting in traffic for the last half hour. And yet, it seems the most natural thing in the world while you’re lying on your back looking up at a midsummer’s night sky or holding the hand of a loved one as they take their last breath. In those moments – moments in which we get a glimpse into eternity – God becomes bigger somehow, more vast, more awesome, maybe even a bit too big causing our finite minds to hurt just trying to gasp it all.

For the most part, we humans tend to want a God that is smaller. It makes Him more approachable. If He is more like us, then we feel as though we can relate to Him, but unfortunately in the process He becomes our equal, our friend, someone we can use, perhaps manipulate, and even overpower with our arguments. We sift through scripture and remove the ones that speak of His holiness, righteousness and sovereignty so that only the ones that speak of His love, longsuffering and patience remain. We do not really want a God who would call us to account from such a standard. We want to live our lives and do our own thing, see ourselves as “good” without the interference of scales and measures and plumb lines showing us where we fall short. All this makes it easy NOT to sit and contemplate the greatness of God. However, as Believers, this truly needs to be a daily activity.

The Psalms and many of the Books of the Prophets are great places to start renewing your mind on this topic, but so worship music (e.g., How Great Thou Art, Great is Thy Faithfulness, How Great is our God), the visual arts, and my favorite, poetry.

Recently, our friend, Terry Thomas (who is an extremely gifted poet as well as writer) shared with me the following essay she wrote years ago which awoke in me a realization of the importance of habitually contemplating just how awesome our God is. In sharing it with you, we hope it will encourage you to do the same.

 

I Must Live

By Terry Thomas

Oh, so many books that I’ve read and so many, yes, so many voices I have heard tell me about God. They tell about God from the eye view of the church and the churched. Oh, how pale and anemic He sounds and looks when seen only from this point of view: how pat, how dull, how nice.

It that it?

Is that all?

 

Does God dwell mainly inside of a building, or inside of the cold brassy rules of man? Is He God only because man declares that He is? I don’t think so.

I want a different view, a wider understanding. Surely, He isn’t little or small in any way. I want to know God and I don’t think that I have the mind or capacity to understand Him from such a small and limited place.

How can a God who created small fuzzy kittens, and Africa and rainbows and waterways and also created me, possibly be contained or defined by the limited mind of man? All things are held together by the power of His word. Why would He choose to live under a roof when all the stars that gild the halls of Glory can be His umbrella?

Why would He choose to be small?

Why should I?

 

About the time that I begin to think that I understand God, about the time I begin to think that I know Him, then He causes me to come into some strange and unknown situation that results in my expansion. He causes me to grow and expand more than ever before and I find that there is once again a larger space inside of me to be filled by Him.

 

You see, I did live for so long in a tight, narrow and safe place. But there was so much more. I was lured across a line… into a larger place. I moved outside my own boundaries and in doing so I saw what I had not seen before nor had ever dreamed existed. God was so much bigger than I had imagined. He was greater than my largest dream. He was bigger than my most distant vision, broader than my narrow view could enfold.

 

So, I have come to believe that in order to see all of God one would need eyes that could see 360 degrees at one time in all dimensions. I was so narrow, but now…how can I ever fit back into the narrow and suffocating confines of before?

 

Why should I?

 

I must only go on--- holding the hand of my God, through the vast and foreign places until I grow to fit, or finally come to a place that is home. Where I’ve left can never again be for me. I do not exactly desire to run from where I was…it is just that I am compelled to continue to press forward.

 

GOD IS GREAT AND LARGE AND GOOD

 

He is not a small place, and He is not only under a roof or in a closet, nor is He contained by the minds of men. He is so large that a lifetime won’t find all of Him.

 

Eternity is just a beginning.

 

But…if I am to start then I must leave the narrow, tight and confining place behind, I must forge on forward to …? His goal for me, whatever, wherever it is.

 

I do not know.

He does.

That is enough.

 

I must feel and touch and taste and moan and cry and love and laugh and run and dance.

I MUST LIVE OR I WILL DIE!

 

May your own desire and passion for Christ be set aflame as you contemplate His greatness today!