Just Between You, Me, & God 7/16/2012

Summer reminds me of scout camp and regular campouts.  My wife’s idea of roughing it is a Holiday Inn without room service, so we’ve only been camping once together and that’s a story for another time.  I enjoyed being outdoors, especially at night.  We were out in the country where there are no city lights blocking the natural star light.  During the day the sky looks big with just the sun and maybe some clouds filling up the empty space but at night, in the country, the sky looks immense with a countless number of tiny dots of light scattered across the sky as if you’d thrown glitter on a black ceiling.  You quickly see the familiar constellations like the big dipper, the little dipper, Sagittarius, and Pegasus.  But take some time and a long close look.  Some lights move, some twinkle, and some don’t.  The ones that move are generally satellites or maybe a space shuttle, the ones that don’t twinkle are generally planets while the ones that do are stars or suns that we couldn’t reach in our lifetime.  It is beyond our imagination as to just how big God’s universe really is.  In our own lives everything has a beginning and an end, even though it often seems like piano recitals and business meetings won’t ever end, they eventually do.  Jesus said that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  In a conversation with Job, God is setting him straight about who God is compared to us.  Look at Job 38:31-33, “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?  Can you loose the cords of Orion?  Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?”  If God is so big and powerful that He can hold entire solar systems, then why do we doubt His power in our lives?  Power to give us comfort and peace when there is none to be found, power to change the course of our lives when we have go far off the path, power to forgive the deepest of sins when we can’t even forgive ourselves and, power to heal marriages and to repair broken families that others have given up on.  This kind of power that sets galaxies in motion and planets in orbit brought life to the mere dust of this Earth and shaped it into His image.  You would think that the Creator deserves the fear or respect that He is due from the creation?  Proverbs 9:10 tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”   Maybe more of us should head out to the country this weekend where there are no lights obscuring our view and get a closer look at the handy work of our Lord then maybe we can begin to look at the wonderful creation of each other without the obscuring lights of our own sin nature clouding our view.  Pastor Dean

Pastor Dean Hanssen is the Outreach & Ministries Pastor for LHF