Unfathomable

The other night in a moment of prayer and seeking God, I had a profound thought.

God knows everything. 

At first glance, that doesn’t seem so profound.  As Christians, we’ve all heard and talked about God’s omniscience before.   It’s pretty standard theological fare as far as it goes.  However for some reason, the idea struck home for me that night.

God knows everything.  He knows everything that ever happened, and He knows everything that ever will happen.  He knows about things that existed before He created our universe.  He knows about things that will exist after our universe is gone.  He knows every movement of every atom everywhere that will happen tomorrow and on a Monday in June 100 trillion years from now. 

I felt a bit like I had stepped into the Total Perspective Vortex from Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  If you don’t know what that is, you’re an uncultured heathen.  But I’ll explain anyway.  The Total Perspective Vortex is the ultimate torture device: “When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, ‘You are here’” (p. 70).  Scary stuff.  And then add in the infinity of time on top of that, and I thought my world had just imploded.

And then an even crazier thought came to mind.  This God, this same One who knows everything, Who made everything with a word, this God speaks to me and has called me to follow Him.  He abides within me.  And this part is totally incomprehensible: He loves me.

No wonder Paul writes:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

(Ephesians 3:14-19)

In order to be filled up with the fullness of God, an event that surpasses knowledge on so many levels, we need two things: strength through His Spirit and Christ dwelling in our hearts.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.  (Ephesians 3:20-21)