Bigger Than a Stack of Elephants

Warm golden rays of early morning sunshine squeezed through the cracks of the window blinds. Slowly turning my head, I opened my eyes to meet the sleepy gaze of my daughter. After a monster invaded her sweet dream about flying with Tinkerbell© just a few hours earlier, she sought solace in between her daddy and me.

In a raspy whisper she began her usual morning round of questions.

“Mommy, have you ever seen an elephant that was so big she was bigger than God?”

“Nope. That would be impossible. Nothing and no one is bigger than God.”

She scrunched her nose in a manner reminiscent of a picture taken of me thirty-years ago. She was thinking…hard.

“What about a stack of really big giant elephants that went all the way to outer space?”

“Nope. Even they wouldn’t be bigger than God.”

“I just don’t understand how He can be so big,” she exclaimed and then scampered off to brush her teeth.

Like Pumpkindoodle, I cannot wrap my mind around the unquantifiable vastness of our God. He is without limitations…perfect…holy…just…unfathomable. Living everyday with a mind puny in comparison to His, I often forget the magnitude of being under the care of the Almighty.

I worry. I fret. I snip and snap out of fear and frustration. I embrace loneliness. I invite anger. I sometimes even blame others for their inability to fix me. In short, I apply human perimeters to God’s divine power by too often focusing on the irrelevant. Do I not remember that He is the great I Am? Or do I not fully believe how much He loves me?

My daughter grapples to understand the physicality of God’s bigness. My brain let go of that struggle about the same time I stopped playing with dolls. Instead it is the prodigious portion of His love that I strive to understand. A love that I know I do not deserve, but is lavished upon me anyway.

I don’t like to speak for God…but in my heart I feel as if He is explaining His love to me with words like these.

Angela, your life will not go exactly as you want it to because I love you too much for that to happen…but your life…your life is in my hands. These hands that shaped the land upon which you live have brought you into being. You are mine. You have an eternal home. Trust me. All the junk in your life will one day be made beautiful. Allow yourself to delight in my love for you…after all, it is much bigger than you are my dear and it can fill you to overflowing.

Those words are pretty much my paraphrase of what God has spoken in His word and to my heart. They are meant for me and for you.

It also helps me to think of it in this overly simplistic way.

Sometimes I feel my heart will burst because the love I hold for my children cannot fit inside a small space. And let me tell you something…if I was omnipotent and omniscient making me the most powerful being ever to exist…my kids wouldn’t ever need to worry about a single thing.

Well, my heavenly father…He loves me even more than I love my kids. And, that stuff about being omnipotent and omniscient…yep, He’s got that covered. My job is to remember that.

Psalm 119: 73-76 NIV - Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands. May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word. I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant.