stuff i think

The Search for Insignificance

I'm having a problem with God. He's rarely staying in the box I've built for Him. Regularly, I'm being reminded that He is both here and Out There, where I cannot imagine. I can already tell this post is going to lose some folks; perhaps the therapy's in my writing it vs. your reading it. Bear with me.

This all started at 5:45 AM, three minutes ago by my computer's clock. I was leaning against the side arm of the couch, reading The Book and praying, when I looked out the window to the west and saw the sky turn a blue that Sherwin Williams has not even thought off. It was striking - bold, vibrant and so fleeting that even now as I look, the coming sun has altered it. It was there, now it's gone.

I can't describe the blue any other way than vast. It owned the sky, and then some. I was momentarily overwhelmed with the reminder that, in the cosmic scheme of things, we're spinning pretty fast on a relatively small marble of rock. The fact that it spins at the right speed and angle to the sun to allow for life forms to exist is a thought many scientists don't even want to ponder. It seems too orchestrated to be accedental.

I like vast. Maybe it's from growing up in North Dakota, but I like the overwhelming feeling of realizing just how big Everythe Else is in comparision to us. It's why my favorite geographical feature in North America is the Black Rock Desert. Wandering out onto the dry lakebed, all destractions fade away and there's the feeling of being a very small gnat on the rear end of a very large Rhino. Vastness, for me, reminds me of the bigness of God.

Staring for those moments at that blue, I was reminded that somewhere out beyond that blue, wherever that place was, existed a God. The God. And for whatever reason, at 5:45 this AM, He was thinking of me as I thought of Him. I think I caught Him there in the blue for a minute. The fact that He speaks to me in my insignificance overwhelms me with emotion. I'm fine with decreasing if He increases in my life.