Be exalted, O God, above the highest heavens! May your glory shine over all the earth. (Psalm 57:5)

Read: Numbers 21:1-22:20, Luke 1:26-56, Psalm 57:1-11, Proverbs 11:9-11

Relate: Have you ever seen a picture of the earth taken from the furthest vantage point ever? If you just answered no, you lied. Look up. There it is. You see the various bands of light? On that top, brightest band just slightly right of center there is a tiny dot. That’s the earth from about 6 billion kilometers out. It is one tiny planet orbiting a fairly average star that joins 300 billion others to make up our galaxy, the milky way. Our best guess says that our galaxy with its 300 billion stars makes up one of about 100 billion other galaxies, some larger and some smaller than our own.

But I am throwing out numbers. When they start to get that big, they stop making sense. Our minds cannot comprehend it. So maybe this might help:

React: In Genesis 1 God says, “Let there be…” and it was. All of it. All of the unfathomless immensity and countless number of galaxies and all the stars they contain and all the planets revolving around them came into being. From Psalms 147 we know that God has numbered and named each one of those hundreds of trillions of stars. In Psalms 33 he breathes them into existence. In Job 26, God hangs the earth in the sky over nothing as you or I would hang our coat on a rack. In Isaiah 40, God didn’t just create all those stars, He placed each one exactly where He wanted it. (vs 26) How hard was that? As tough as pulling back a tent flap. (vs22)

Whether you read some or all of these as metaphor or if you somehow try to take each of them literally, the point is the same. I can’t even wrap my head around how big the earth is, yet it is fair to middlin compared to the other planets in our solar system. Each of those, even Jupiter is dwarfed by our average sized star which is miniscule compared to some others in our galaxy. This universe is huge. HUGE. Yet it is nothing, compared to the power of our God. His power and knowledge is such that the creation and ordering of everything that is was no less taxing than breathing or perhaps saying a couple words. How great is our God? I can’t even begin to fathom.

Respond: 

God, in all my striving for order and control, help me to understand how powerless I truly am. Even at my most most effective and influential, I am nothing. I can accomplish nothing. But that’s OK. You are in control. You’ve got this, whatever this might be. Help me to not just imagine with my mind but truly try to grasp with my heart just how great You are. No matter how much I exalt You with my words and my life, You are greater. You aren’t just good, You are great. Let me live out a life in awe of You.