Beyond Imagination

Nature. I would argue that it is one of the most spectacular experiences a person can have. We lose sight of it in our daily grind of streets and buildings and sidewalks. Even the trees and grass in our yards can become monotonous when we do not stop to wonder over them. But, take a moment to think about the miracle in the trees that drink up water from the earth and gather nutrients from the soil. Each cell works in perfect unity to make an amazingly functional plant. Within each cell itself is a harmony of busy activity that causes it to play it's little part so well. A little spider crawling across the wall is a manifestation of an unbelievable design. Our own bodies work so well to enable us to eat, sleep, drink, walk, breathe, think, reason,
worship, and wonder!



Take a moment to watch the glorious wildness of the ocean or the snow-covered mountains. Does it get any more awesome? Our minds can hardly comprehend the wild beauty. It exists without us. Places where man with all his knowledge and learning and wisdom and reason has never set foot still teems with glorious life. The majority of our planet is covered with water that bursts with creatures we can not see. A magnificent leaping dolphin or breeching whale just gives us the tiniest glimpse of the life in the oceans. It is beyond us. It dwarfs us.

Yet, there is something, or rather Someone, even more awesome. More magnificent. More glorious! What genius could have thought up Nature? What creative power must be behind such beauty? Can we even fathom it in our weak and limited minds? We marvel at Creation. We stand in awe of the stars above us and the monstrous mountain peaks rising above the clouds. We feel our helplessness when we find ourselves at the mercy of an earthquake or a hurricane. Yet, how much more must the Creator be?!

How can we picture Him? Is He a mystic power? A kindly old man sitting on a cloud? A vague cloudiness? What does your imagination do with the idea of someone so beyond yourself? You and I can only think in the pictures of our experience. Our imaginations are so limited!

C.S. Lewis in his book "Miracles", describes this utter inability of mankind to really grasp who God is. How easily we fool ourselves into thinking and acting as if He were able to be imagined or understood!

"Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of objection to traditional imagery...The Pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance...So here; the shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. 'Look out!' we cry, 'it's alive'. And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back...An 'impersonal God'- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness, inside our own heads-better still. A formless life-force surging though us, a vast power which we can tap- best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband- that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?"~ Miracles by C. S. Lewis