FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2023 - SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS

 FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2023 - SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS

The greatest command is this: Love the Lord Your God with All your heart, All your soul, All your mind; and ALL your strength.    (Hmmm - “ALL” - everything - 100%)

The second is like that:  Love Your Neighbor like yourself.

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LOVE is infinite.  God is LOVE.

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I have been awed - truly awed - by the concept of 200+ trillion galaxies - and each galaxy can have thousands (or millions)  of stars and possibly thousands (or millions) of planets.

I guess I knew that implicitly. But, the very multitude of complexity has overwhelmed me.

I have mentioned that I’ve “kind of” understood infinity.  But, infinity has gotten out-of-bounds when I think of 200 trillion (or more) galaxies.  

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Yup, I could believe in an infinite God - when God created the heavens and the earth.  And, with that, I limited God to the Solar System.  Yes, eight planets, one sun, that’s a lot isn’t it Karen? One God with infinite powers could handle one solar system?

Oops - our Solar System is part of the Milky Way.  Oh well, just an arrangement of some stars.  SOME STARS??  Karen, how dense are you?  Our best estimates tell us that the Milky Way is made up of approximately 100 billion stars. These stars form a large disk whose diameter is about 100,000 light years. 

WOW - that awes me.  Approximately 100 billion stars.

[Aside - quasi joke].  For $49.95, The International Star Foundation will name one of those starts after YOU.  So, you could have the “Karen White”, Star.  (Let’s just 1% of the stars of the Milky Way get names that is a billion stars and at about $50 per naming, that would be 50 billion dollars.  And, by-the-way, the International Star Foundation has Karen White as it’s CEO.]

I kind of got my brain around God being the infinite God of one planet (Earth), and one system (our Solar System) - so it was stretching my brain to think of 200 trillion galaxies and oodles of stars (and who knows how many planets that might entail?)

I’m awed at how infinite God is!!!

Well, my brain has been fried (just a colorful statement, my actual brain still exists and has never been in a frying pan).   And, maybe some of the planets have life - and the God of the Universe - who I personally know and who personally knows and talks to and with me - could be the God of trillions and trillions of living beings who personally know and talk to this infinite God at the same time.  

Having been a computer person, clock and clock speed is important.  Unless you have more than one processor, a computer can do one instruction at a time.  So, you have a computer that can do a billion instructions in a minute (pretty fast) - but God can do a trillion-trillion-trillion instructions in NO-time - that is God can do an infinite set of activities in ZERO time.  A computer that can do a billion instructions in a minute, swaps the current instruction out, loads the next instruction, does it, swaps it out, does the next, etc.  Sure, it is fast, but not as fast as God seems to be.

I’ve heard the concept that God is “out of time”.  As a human, I am so bound by time.  I have worn a watch almost all of my life. I have four clocks in my apartment (okay, one is the time on the microwave).

When I considered God as being in heaven someplace above the Earth that was great.  I could walk outside and look up, smile, and think God is someplace up there above me someplace  I was limiting the infiniteness of God.  God is infinite, He created the heavens and the Earth - and he is close to me.  

But, when I considered God as over 200 trillion galaxies, God got to be too big, for little oh me!!  Heaven wasn’t just “up” outside my door, but might be millions of light-years away.  God wasn’t just the God of my tiny planet in some obscure corner of the universe, God was near me.  But a God that has so much territory and still loves and knows me - I am so amazingly ‘awed’.  

I have overused the word “awesome” in the past - and I need a better word - maybe “Wondrous”.  

Slowly it is seeping into my brain, that I was limiting my infinite God to “my” world.  ““I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” I learned years ago that infinity raised to the infinity power is called “Omega”.  So, how about infinity raised to the infinity power and that value raised to the infinity power and that value raised to the infinity power (infinity times).  

I’m finding my God to be so vast, so awesome, so wondrous, so fantastic - and so absolutely beyond me that I am smaller than an atom.

AND YET, I KNOW GOD AND HE KNOWS (AND LOVES) ME.  HOW WONDERFUL IS THAT!!!

Rich Mullins wrote, “My God is an awesome God”.  I sang that for my son (Steve) and his wife (Sara) wedding.

Our God is an awesome God

He reigns from heaven above

With wisdom, power, and love

Our God is an awesome God

And, of course, God can be everywhere at once - EVERYWHERE - ALL.  So, if I call out “God I LOVE YOU!” He hears it because He is with me - always.  Okay, Christians believe in a triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We believe we receive Christ in us, we believe the Holy Spirit is always with us.  

So, every believer (whatever that term means) is close to God - because God actually resides within me.  So, it isn’t as if God is currently over in the Alpha-Centauri system, but He will be right back in 1 trillionth of a second - He is with me - He is EVERYWHERE!!!  

So place and time are not constraints to God.  And, this God of the universe - LOVES ME, ADORES ME, HUGS ME - all day long (but who cares about time).  

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

KAREN ANNE WHITE, ©, January 6, 2023