How long has it been since you’ve played the game So Big?
The key component for this game is a small child – especially a little one who doesn’t yet have the capacity to speak many words.
An adult will ask, “How big have you grown since the last time I saw you?” Then together adult and child will put out their arms and shout, “So big!”
Someone else will ask, “And how big will you be this time next year?” Everyone stretches out their arms even farther and says, “So big!”
There are grown-up versions of this game as well.
How big is that pile of clothes and household items you’ll donate to Goodwill when you finally get around to cleaning your closets? It’s so big! And how big is your February VISA bill after all those Christmas expenses? So big!
This exercise does have certain limitations.
For example, it’s generally not a good idea to turn to your spouse during this Sunday’s Super Bowl gathering and ask, “So, honey, how big is your belt going to have to be since you’ve been grazing on those snacks since the first quarter?”
Here’s a more redemptive question:
How big is your God? Is your God so big, or is he much, much smaller?
It’s actually not that hard to tell.
The size of your God is directly related to how much you worry…to how much you hope…to how well you’ll handle the most irritating things that will happen to you today.
Someone may be able to recite from memory a dozen Scripture verses about the omnipotence and sovereignty of God, but if the God they actually trust is dramatically smaller, they have little choice but to begin every 24 hours knowing that the outcome of the day ahead is ultimately up to them.
Therefore they feel threatened by loss.
They feel frightened by the unpredictable.
They feel anxious about the future.
To know and to trust a God who is as big as the Bible claims, however, is to face life with a fundamentally different perspective, one that’s expressed in King David’s prayer in I Chronicles 29:11:
“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.”
If those words seem vaguely familiar, it’s because the early Church co-opted them to become the finale to the Lord’s Prayer: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”
The first followers of Jesus were not in doubt about the immensity of God.
God is so big that we can have the assurance we will never be separated from his love.
God is so big we can let rejection and insults go, choosing to respond to difficult people with love.
God is so big we can survive anything that happens – even if we have seriously screwed up, or taken a huge hit to our reputation, or just received disheartening news from a doctor, or suffered the termination of a job we thought we’d always have.
God is so big we can lose money, and lose dreams, and even lose a person we have loved with all of our heart, yet still be able to grasp, deep down, that we can never lose what really matters – the assurance of deep, lasting Life in this world and the next.
That’s a seriously big God, indeed.
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