“I am such an imperfect creation. A puny worm. Worthless. How could Jesus possibly love me?”
Have you ever said the same kind of thing in your mind? Me too. Yet I know I’m God’s child. Of course, He loves me.
You know why? Because I have sought Him out. Because I want to know Him, and He is pleased with my feeble efforts.
“Feeble efforts.”* I lifted that phrase from the deep writings of A.W. Tozer. He speaks of “God’s transcendence,”* how far God is above everything and everyone else.
God is so far above us we can’t measure it. I don’t mean His physical place in our universe. I mean His place in all of existence, which Tozer writes about. After reading his chapter on “Divine Transcendence,” I made a two-column chart in my journal. On the left, I wrote, “The Created.” On the right, “The I AM.
Under “The Created,” I made a sample list of animals from the amoeba to the archangel. A huge difference between the two; actually, a huge difference between amoeba and man (homo sapiens), then another huge difference between man and angels.
No matter how colossal those differences are, they’re finite. Every single one of them was created. God initiated the beginning of their lives.
But God Himself? HE IS.
No beginning, no end. He is “Light Unapproachable.”* He is “Love without Measure.”* The gulf between God and His creation is infinite. I wanted to insert a picture depicting that vast separation, but nothing on the internet comes close.
Should this infinite space between the God of the universe and ourselves terrify us? Yes. And no.
Yes—especially if we have no faith. Which some may think is an oxymoron. If you have no faith, you won’t know what to fear, right? Wrong. Every human being, regardless of beliefs, recognizes they might have missed the mark on key truths in our universe. Even the most devout atheist must ask himself or herself, “What if I’m wrong? What if there really is a God?” That question can bring about terror. (Romans 1:21, 22, 28)
For the believer, though, fear enters in the garb of awed respect. We recognize the beautiful “otherness” of our Creator and Savior. We bemoan our terrible inability to be worthy of His Love. Yet, at the same time, He has shown us His Love—His crucifixion and His resurrection—and we fall at His feet, literally or figuratively, and we worship Him.
Often, when I meet people who flippantly question why I would have faith in a god who allows terrible things to happen, I can only answer with, “All I know is that God is God, and I am not.”
God is God And I Am Not
THAT is the infinite gulf between creation and the Omnipotent, All-knowing God.
Let us give thanks for His awesome goodness!
Tozer, A.W., The Knowledge of the Holy, Harper Collins Publisher, 1961, p. 71-73.
Photo credits: Bow and Worship by Luis Alberto Sanchez Terrones on Unsplash, Man and the Stars by Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash, feature photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash.
