From the Archive: The Uncontainable God
The circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles. Traveling at 65 mph, 24 hours a day, it would take you 16 days to travel around the earth. The earth, however, is minute compared to the sun which could contain a million earths. The sun, however, is only a medium-sized star, dwarfed by a red super-giant star called Antares. Fifty million suns could fit into Antares. Antares, however, is just a speck in the vastness of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Billions of stars, including super-giants like Antares, as well as countless comets and asteroids, comprise the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy, however, is just a small part of the universe. And yet, containing billions of galaxies, the universe is more empty than filled.
But that’s not all. Somewhere above or beyond the seemingly infinite vastness of the universe’s expanse is God:
Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? (Psalm 113.5-6)
The distance to the horizon (or edge) of our visible universe is measured in light years (186,000 miles per second, six trillion miles per year) and what is observable suggests to astronomers that the visible universe is some 28 billion light years in diameter. And God stoops down to look on the heavens? Indeed, the testimony of the biblical revelation is that the universe — vast beyond our comprehension or calculation — is insufficient to contain the “super-infinite” vastness of God.
But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. (1 Kings 8.27)
God —bigger than this vast, immeasurable universe! And yet, the most incomprehensible event of quantification has occurred —
For in Christ all the fullness of [God] lives in bodily form . . . (Colossians 2.9)
From the Bulletin Article Archives, circa 2005.