Bigness and closeness

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks into pieces the cedars of Lebanon. –Psalm 29:3-5 (NIV)

Several years ago, I was as close to a tornado as I ever care to be. We knew we were in for some weather, so we were watching the reports. Sure enough, the possibility of severe thunderstorms became a tornado watch, then a warning, as some rotating winds and funnel clouds were detected in the area. The skies grew dark, then turned a dull grey-green. Small pieces of wind-blown debris danced circles in the yard and the neighborhood. I sequestered my wife and our three youngest children in a bathroom in the middle of the house, while my oldest son and I stayed outside and continued to watch, mesmerized.

It was scary, but at the same time exhilarating. The air felt electric. The hair on the back of our necks stood up. There was, in fact, a tornado in the area, and it did, in fact, touch down briefly in a subdivision about a half-mile away, leaving some property damage, but thankfully, nothing more. There’s something almost intoxicating about being in the proximity and presence of something so big and so powerful that it can barely be comprehended, much less controlled.

The children of Israel had experienced that kind of bigness. But it had been a long, long time since they had seen it up close. In the meantime, many had reduced God to a glaring, vengeful caricature, while others just decided He no longer cared at all. Their so-called leaders were overly infatuated with form over substance, bickering with one another as many of them chased political influence rather than holiness. As a result, worship became an obligation for most, a hopeful but conflicted attempt at appeasing an angry God.

The arrival of Messiah broke a 400-year silence of God communicating with His people. God became a baby – born of a woman, growing up from childhood, experiencing pain and hunger and puberty and all the other joys and sorrows that humans experience. “Immanuel” – God is with us! He had been there all along, but our minds had made Him seem unattainable, unapproachable, inaccessible. Jesus gave God a face. We were surprised and relieved to find that it was the face of a friend. The bigness and the closeness of God. You reckon the people who met Jesus felt electricity in the air? Did their neck hairs stand up? A few years later, the curtain in the temple was torn in two and God would never be far from any of us again. Let us never lose the wonder of an Almighty God Who is close enough to touch.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. –John 1:1-5, 14, 18 (NIV)