Beyond Me

No one is like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power. Who should not revere you, O King of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you. Jeremiah 10:6, 7 (NIV)

Last evening my family and I turned off all the lights and sat in our family room and watched a spring thunderstorm pass by. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as we sat there in wonder and gazed at the splendor out our back windows. The beauty of the fiery streaks and the resulting rumble made me think of the awesome power of the God I serve. I began to wonder--how many times do I take this powerful Being for granted? How often do I just assume He's there and think nothing of it? Yes, He is always there for me and He is Someone to talk to when I am lonely or sad or confused. He hears my requests and pleas and quite often gives me "yes" for an answer to my prayers. He definitely loves me beyond my understanding. But just how many times do I take all those incredible qualities as my due?! What a mistake!

Jeremiah 10:1-16 is eye-opening. You've got to read the whole thing. (I could only fit two verses from it at the top of this devotional.) Jeremiah talks about the mistakes that people made in his day. Idol makers would go out and pick a nice tree or stump and than fashion a shape out of it to bow down to. Jeremiah states that these idols were like a "scarecrow in a melon patch." They couldn't speak and had to be carried around because they couldn't walk. I read that and think, "Well, DUH! What were these people thinking?" They had the opportunity to worship a God who is more powerful than they could ever have imagined, the wisest Being of all time, the Creator of all that they could see. And what did they do? They went out and asked a rock to do God's job. God's power, His majesty, His holiness was ignored. Maybe it was just too much for them to grasp. Maybe they had to shrink God down to a size they could handle and that's why they worshiped inanimate objects. Is that my problem? Is God so big that because I can't get my mind around Him, I shrink Him down to Someone I can take for granted? I suspect that might be the case. And then I read passages like the one in Jeremiah and realize, "Whoa! This is not some small God I worship! He is enormous! He is way beyond my comprehension." Jeremiah says that "when [God] is angry, the earth trembles and the nations can't endure his wrath," that "He made the earth by his power, and the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding." God's power is huge. It blows my mind that such a God could care for me, could love me, could desire a relationship with me (me!).

Maybe He knew that we as feeble humans would tend to try to reduce Him to something much smaller than what He really is-something we could grasp. And maybe, just maybe, that's why He sends us things like thunderstorms-to remind us of Who we serve, how powerless we really are, and how awesome He truly is.

God, the vastness of your character is beyond my comprehension. You are way too much for me to understand. Forgive me when I take You for granted and thank you for the reminders (like thunderstorms) of how awe-inspiring You really are.

Janine Miller