Your God is Big Enough

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and marveled at the vastness of it? I’m fascinated by its depth, its unexplored infinity. The beauty of the sparkling sky takes my breath away on a clear night. But, if I’m honest, I’m also terrified by it. To look up at the immensity of space and all its unknowns and hidden mysteries reminds me of how very small and insignificant I really am. There are times when I can’t bring myself to stand out in the open under the night sky. I feel naked, exposed, afraid. I shudder and find myself wanting to make it just a little less majestic. I feel safest when I can enjoy its beauty from the confines of my home, marveling at it through the glass of my windows.

Most days I’m content to enjoy the sliver of sky I can see from my kitchen window. It’s only a small piece, but it’s familiar. The glowing moon, the constant constellations. The little piece of all the grandeur that I can know and claim and feel at home under. I even imagine, sometimes, that that sliver is all there is.

It sounds a little silly, doesn’t it? Yet we’ve all had those moments. Those experiences with the “greater than” that left us feeling exposed, terrified. We scramble to find shelter, to dial back just a bit of the immensity. Because we are so small.

Much of my relationship with God has been that way. I read about a majestic God, a God who rides into battle on chariots of thunder. A God who splits the seas and levels the mountains. A God who calms raging storms with nothing more than a word.

He is a little like the night sky. Vast, majestic, unknown, and sometimes terrifying.

I sift through the stories I’ve heard about him. Through the evidence of him in the soaring mountains and the deep, unexplored oceans. I temper all the greatness with the little slivers I can manage. I carve out of the vast view of God’s infinity a little fraction I can know and claim and feel comfortable with.

I domesticate God.

C.S. Lewis’ God was as wild as the night sky. He was a lion who roared onto the pages of his stories unannounced and often unexpected. When he appeared, the earth shook. His song hung the planets, formed the earth, swelled the seas. He was wholly unsafe, uncomfortable, and wonderful.

My God, the God I most often choose to turn to, is more like a domesticated house cat. He is small. He is safe. He is predictable and comfortable.

One of my kids said the other day, “If God’s love is like a warm blanket, I’ll take it.”

The words struck me to my core, because I realized it was how I’d been treating him. As though the God who was capable of so much existed only to be my warm blanket, my place of comfort and warmth.

Of course God is a God of comfort. Of course he is a safe haven, a refuge. He is constant, unchanging, reliable.

But there is danger in confining him to the sliver I can safely see from my kitchen window.

If God is only as big as the glimpse with which I’m comfortable, only powerful enough to be my warm blanket, then he is woefully inadequate. How could a house-cat God stand in the face of war? Of famine? Of economic ruin? Of pandemic?

How can my domesticated version of God see me through the upheaval, the unknown, the uncomfortable?

The short answer is, of course, he couldn’t.

But, thank God, there is more to the night sky than the sliver I see from my window. And there is infinitely more to God than the fragment I’ve clung to.

Psalm 68 paints a picture of a mighty God. When he arises, his enemies are scattered. He leads a train of captives, defeated at the sound of his voice. When he marches out, the earth shakes and the heavens pour down rain. He says the word and armies flee. His chariots, it says, are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands.

He is mighty. He is terrifying. He is the prowling lion of C.S. Lewis’ imagination.

But he is not wholly unpredictable. He is not dangerous, powerful without restraint or purpose. No, every action, every ounce of strength, serves its purpose. He levels the armies that oppose his people. He takes captive those who have oppressed them. The rains bring relief and refreshment to his children. The chariots stand ready to defend the widow and the orphan, the vulnerable and small.

In other words, he is capable. He is strong. He is mighty.

He is big enough.

Oh, how I need a lion. Oh, how I need a God who calms the storms with one word. Oh, how I need a God who splits the seas in half, who levels the mountains, who shakes the earth. Oh, how I need a God who is big enough.

The world is upside down, friends. It often has been. Our God has seen his children through wars and famines and plagues and disasters. He was big enough. He is infinitely more than the comfortable warm blanket, the sliver of sky we see through our windows. And he is infinitely more than the crisis we face now.

“Summon your power, O God, show us your strength, Oh God, as you have done before.”

Psalm 68:28

Your God is big enough.