The Awesome God We Serve

We have previously discussed the idea that the work of salvation is not our search for God but His search for us. When the word salvation is mentioned we interpret it, like most everything else, through our own distorted ego. We believe it is something we search for and find, as if we have control…..

In Greek Mythology, Prometheus seized fire from Zeus and gave it to humanity for their benefit. When it was discovered what he did Zeus chained and tortured Prometheus. The gods were seen as a rival. More than that the Greeks viewed their gods with suspicion and distrust. The gods, they reasoned, have something we want and they do not want to part with it. Therefore, through herculean effort, we must seize what we want from the gods. I will be powerful enough, moral enough to rise above the gods.

Can you see the play of the ego here? It makes us the center of the battle. Everything rests on us. This is the corruption within all of us that requires the GIFT of Salvation for humanity. Salvation is not something we find or something we contend and wrestle for.  Salvation is not ours to control. It is a gift offered and not something we can find within ourselves.
The Period of enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries was a time of philisophical study and educational advancement. The great minds reasoned that man could save himself by practicing virtue and seeking education.  The 20th century proved them wrong. It was the most violent in human history. Man , it seems, has never really changed. We can improve ourselves certainly. But we cannot save ourselves.

Explore your own thoughts.  Our egos like to make ourselves the center of the universe. We like to control and have control. It occurs so naturally that we do not comprehend it even happens.

We are all born shortsighted. St Paul said we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror. Our vision is skewed through our own perception which focuses on ourselves and based on our own narrow viewpoint. Our ideas start within and are reflective of our egos. It’s no wonder why we desperately need salvation.

Be open to the possibility you are wrong and right at the same time.
Be open to God and others around you.

God has a long view of salvation and redemption which not only includes you and I, here and now, but it also includes all of creation at the end of the age. Our life plans extend for 5-10 or 50 years but GOD’s plans? They extend for millennia. How can we possibly grasp that?

How can we arbitrarily write God off after we assume He has not shown himself to us, or the world, in a way we understand.  Could our understanding be defective? Am I looking at things through the lens of my own distorted ego? We make narrow assumptions of God based on our 70 or so short years of our life. 
Can you see the ego at play here? "God you must perform for me in a way I understand or I will not believe or I will simply give up." Oftentimes our arrogance has no boundaries. Goodness, thank-you Father that you are a God of great mercy and compassion and you continue that kindness for a 1000 generations. 

In a past post named “Are we presenting God to the World Correctly” I mentioned that we might want to spend less time trying to interpret God and more time just standing in awe of Him. Resist the ego- mind’s temptation to understand God and simply trust Him. Trying to categorize God much like everything else humanity does is very flawed because God is in no category we can define.....

Let’s look at a few interesting facts that show the awesome power of our God.

• Eighty years ago, we thought the entire universe consisted of what we now know as the Milky Way galaxy. In reality, our galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions of others.
• Space is extremely vast. Each galaxy is home to around 200 billion stars. This is more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of planet Earth.
• Light travels 16 billion miles every day. The milky way is 586 Quadrillion miles across.  
• Now consider that there are 200 billion galaxies in the universe some even larger than our milky way and also consider that each galaxy can be a 100,000 light years apart and you get the picture.
• Our space shuttle travels at 17,000 miles an hr. or 408,000 miles a day. So how long would it take the shuttle to travel across the 586 Quadrillion miles to get across the Milky way?

• The closest galaxy to our own Milky Way is 2.5 million light years away. It would take many of billions of years to reach it with our present technology.
• Our nearest star outside of our own solar system is Alpha Centauri, a paltry 4 light years away. At our best speed it would take 18000 years to get there. In the vastness of space, our home would not even be visible to a visitor on Alpha Centauri. But God would see you and know you .......