I’m a big believer in truth in lyrics, meaning that I can find a lot of truth in praise songs. For this post I think a great song is “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin. I added it to my play list so go and click on it. Here are the lyrics if you want to read along:
From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation's revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God
Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night
None can fathom
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God
You are amazing God
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
Incomparable, unchangeable
You see the depths of my heart and You love me the same
You are amazing God
You are amazing God
It’s an amazing song, and Tomlin gets it spot on. God IS indescribable, uncontainable, all powerful and untamable! So often we try and put God in a box and view him as some kind of magic “Get Out of Jail Free” card, calling on Him only when we’re in a tight place (or forgot to study for a test, or just got pulled over by a cop, etc.). I hope by the end of this first post anyone reading this will laugh at the idea of trying to contain God. He created the world around us and everything in it. If that isn’t spectacular enough for you, then how about the universe? Thanks to our every increasing technology we are able to explore and discover more about the universe around us. Daily astronomers are discovering new and breathtaking images of galaxies, stars, and nebulas. I’m enclosing just a small sampling of these images. If you want some more, head on over to http://hubblesite.org/gallery/ to view some of the images the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped, they’re pretty amazing.
How incredible are those? And to think, God spoke them into existence. He didn’t piece them together like a kid playing with Legos. He merely spoke the word, and these breathtaking things sprung into existence. And more than just breathtaking, they are massive! Space is so vast that we have to measure it in light-years. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, obviously, but let’s put that into perspective here. Light travels at 186,000 miles per hour. 186,000 mph!!! You want to know the distance light travels in one year? 5,878,630,000,000 miles. Almost 6 TRILLION miles. Is anyone starting to get an idea for the scale of the universe yet? If not, how about this. The Whirlpool Galaxy (the last image) is 23 million light-years from Earth. You do the math (I think my computer would crash if I tried to). Point is, the universe is massive (and we haven’t even explored all of it). Compare that with Isaiah 40:12 – “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?” Marked off the heavens with the breadth of his hand. Basically, Isaiah is saying that God can measure the span of the entire universe between His thumb and His fingers. God is so much more powerful and incredible than we can ever hope to grasp with our human limitations. And despite all this, despite everything we do to push Him away, He desires a relationship with us, to know us personally, to love and be loved by us. Going back to Tomlin’s lyrics, at the very end he says “You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same, you are amazing God”. God sees and knows all of our deepest, darkest secrets and sins, and He still loves us to death, even to the point of His death. He loved and continues to love us so much that He was willing to become one of us, live with us, and sacrifice Himself for us so that we could have an everlasting relationship with Him. And you know what? The universe is screaming this truth as it praises God at the top of its lungs with an unheard voice. You remember the Whirlpool Galaxy? NASA astronomers pulled this image from the Hubble and dubbed it the “X Structure at Core of Whirlpool Galaxy”. Basically, this is a picture that the Hubble snapped of the dead center of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Take a look:
I really don’t have to words to describe this. All I can say is this: know that God is so infinitely bigger than you and I. He reigns and rules over all of creation, and all of creation gives praise and glory to Him. And for us, for these insignificant motes of dust He was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. The ripples from that act of immense and terrible sacrifice were so immensely powerful that they reached out and touched something 23 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS away. I pray that if you are reading this, regardless of whether you believe in Jesus or not, you would take note of this and count it for what it is worth. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Almighty God stepped down from His throne for you. Please do not ignore Him, or minimize Him. He is not a force to be contained. To go back to the song one last time, Tomlin called God “untamable”. This made me think of the Chronicles of Narnia, where C.S. Lewis writes of Aslan, “He is not a tame lion”. The glory and power of God are immense and awesome and terrible, but all of that is for Part 2 of this post. For now, I hope you got a sense of how incredibly small we are, and how inconceivably large God is. So, until the next post, this time I will leave you with Psalm 8:
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
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