Beyond Imagination

And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit…” Isaiah 57:14-15

Do you ever find yourself amazed at something in creation? Perhaps struck by the incomprehensibility and complexity of a tiny bee on a flower. Perhaps gazing at the heavens. However, if any truth has become more potent and awesome to me in my short time at Seminary, it must be the reality of God. I find myself grasping to wrap my mind around statements like these made above.

…high and lifted up…I dwell in the high and holy place. Can we lift our thoughts for just a moment to see the wonder of this? Stop and consider the incomprehensible God, the great I AM, who even now, as the King of kings shines with brightness and glory that we cannot even gaze upon, and reigns in magnificence, worshipped by angelic hosts in the throne-room of heaven. Think on this.

Who inhabits eternity: The question of every Christian child is “where did God come from?” The simple answer that “God did not have a beginning” is bewildering to the child, just as it is to the old sage. And so it will be to the mind of man for eon after eon of eternity – we shall never fully grasp this in our finite minds, I expect. God always was. Can you imagine if God did not exist? You cannot. It is incomprehensible that God should not exist.

There was a time when we did not exist. He created us out of nothing. That too is really beyond us. We may be tempted to think we can comprehend it (probably imagining blackness and space – but that is actually something). To comprehend the nothingness – the non-existence of the created reality - is by definition impossible for a created being. It would require stepping outside of creation – where there is only God in his infinitude. But into this nothingness, God spoke, and temporal reality blossomed.

How “Other” this Creator is, to whom time itself bows its knee in worship and awe.

…and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit. How shall we respond to this, but with humble, humble thanksgiving? For the one to whom the powers and principalities of heaven and earth bend their knee – the incomprehensible, invisible, immortal, eternal, unchangeable, infinite Lord – came to suffer and die among we who hated him. The incarnation must astound us… it is beyond what we will ever be able to comprehend - and more than we could ever have imagined to hope for. “I will be with you…” Feel the weight of such a promise from God to you, little Christian. These are things into which “angels long to look.”

Have you met the Almighty on His terms? Have you considered just who this Lord Jesus, this “suffering servant” is? Have you taken seriously the “immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe”? Believer; non-believer; the Spirit of God says “Come, let us reason together.”