“My God is so BIG! So strong and so mighty there’s nothing my God cannot do…”
These are some of the words to a kids’ song I grew up singing – a song I’m sure is familiar to many of you as well. It goes on to sing about how the mountains and the valleys are God’s and about how the stars are his handiwork too.
Learning these types of songs at such a young age began to develop in me a deep faith that there truly is “nothing my God cannot do, for you!”
It’s been fun for me to reflect now, as a 34-year-old woman, on the foundations of my faith; to appreciate them for what they are. And it’s even more fun to see how much God has been building upon those foundations throughout my life! Because, of course, the purpose of a foundation is not meant to be something people look and gawk at (not until much, much, MUCH later on, at least). The purpose is to be built strong and firm so that they can hold the weight of a building and life and the storms…
Lately I’ve been amazed, once again, by how big and strong and mighty God is. But as I consider how big and huge God is, I’m no longer focusing on how much that means God can do for me. Rather, my mind has been being blown by how much can fit within God.
Another familiar children’s song sings about how “He’s got the world in his hands” … but I have a feeling that even that is too small for our God.
The best way I can explain how big God is, is to think of the example of space, and how all of the stars and planets fit into the expanse of space. Except that even the unknowable expanses of space are also somehow held in the bigness of God… and since I don’t know how to imagine something that is simply big and not just a gigantic person, I think I would name this Bigness of God, Love.
All of us and our loved ones and our world and the galaxies are held together in God, who is Love.
While I was away on holiday, we got to go to Norwich, England. Although the purpose of our visit was for Cole and I to get tattoos from a fantastic little tattoo studio there, we also got to visit an extremely significant historical site.
Julian of Norwich (1343-after 1416) was a Christian mystic and anchoress (think nun, but way more intense). Although not much of her life before becoming an anchoress is known, the years she spent living in seclusion were of great impact. She lived (by choice) in a small room or cell that was attached to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich. There were three windows to her room, one to let some light in, one where people would visit her and speak with her, seeking counsel and prayer, and the third window was for her to receive care for herself (food, water, etc.).
When she was thirty she became deathly ill and as she was laying on her deathbed, she was given 16 visions of God and God’s Divine Love. She was miraculously healed and when she was well enough, she wrote out all of the visions she had received in a book called Revelations of Divine Love which is the earliest surviving works written in the English language by a woman!!
In the second World War, the church and her cell were destroyed by an air raid but the foundations remained.
They were eventually able to rebuild the church and her cell as they would have been originally. And we got to go there and walk through the little church and the even smaller cell!! It was incredible.
At the entrance of Julian’s cell there was a table and a little basket of hazelnuts, along with a quote from one of her visions:
In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought “What may this be?”
Julian of Norwich
And it was generally answered thus: “It is all that is made.” I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.”
My hope for us at Lifespring, is that we might pause and consider our foundations. To examine what our lives are being built upon. For some of us, they will be strong and magnificent and for some of us, they might actually be exposed and laid bare by the destruction of life and suffering.
Along with considering the state of our foundations, I’d love for us to also be people who pause and consider what God has been building and forming; growing and nurturing within us. Because regardless of where our stories have begun, God is faithful and has been working in us and through us and all around us – lovingly. Even more amazingly, we get to now make the decision to have Jesus be the foundation upon which we want our lives to be built – a foundation which can never be destroyed.
May we be people who choose Christ daily to be our foundation – rather than financial security or job security or even health and wellness!
May we be people who are forever marked by this radical Love of God and who continue to become perpetually undone by the bigness of Love.
May we also learn to value and appreciate the irreplaceable significance each of us hold with God in our very tiny littleness.