Big Bang

  “The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, ‘Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.’” Exodus 34:6-7

  God has defined Himself.

  It is who He is…always…since before the dawn of time and who He will continue to be far beyond the end of it.

  There has been a scientific BBC Earth series entitled, “The Planets” on TV this past while that has fascinated me. It talks about the formation of our solar system and each of the planets. It explains how dust and gases came together over the millennia to form the sun and the planets. The dust made rocks. Rocks made bigger rocks. The bigger the rock, the stronger the gravitational pull. Those collected with even bigger ones until there was no more in the area where a new planet had evolved.

  I get it. It makes perfect sense to a person all too familiar with the effects of gravity. It left me with a big question I would love to pose to the scientist narrating the series; a question that never came up. “Where did the dust and gases come from in the first place?”

  Now, here’s another question…How does this tie into attempting to understand the nature of God with my frail, limited abilities?

  God is a God of pattern. A leaf, the great waterways and even our own bodies contain a network of veins to carry life to all reaches of the tree, the earth and our own toes and fingertips. The mountains, the forests, the depths of the oceans can be delineated by fractal mathematics. Pattern after pattern is around us everywhere.

  I digress…

  Is the gravitational pull of God the great unseen force we define as love? Is physical gravity a tangible way of experiencing the effects of such wondrous, unquenchable love as God has for us?

  That’s kind of cool…if I think about gravity and the weight of my body on this earth I can feel the gravitational pull of God’s presence on my heart.

  I think of how God formed His church. It’s exactly the same way as the universe was formed. Jesus, the Son, gathered first one than two than all of His disciples. Those disciples gathered more believers. I believe the idea of a thousand generations mentioned in today’s verse is really a metaphor for eternity.

  So here it is…all things physical are the offspring of the metaphysical, the greatness of God the Creator. I am left speechless and filled with awe and wonder that a God so great is with me right now as the keyboard keys click with each strike.

  It now makes perfect sense that Peter was a rock on which the church has been built. I now understand, too, how Christ is the cornerstone. See? Patterns of gravity.

  Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, world without end. AMEN!