I nominate this chapter of Scripture as one of the very best. The child in me quickly feels my imagination take off as image after immense image depict the matchless greatness of God.
He gets it, that we don’t! We shrink Him down and even dare to manage Him. And like a volcano, He erupts, making it abundantly clear that the Divine is not to be managed. It is to be pursued and sought and revered.
These words from Isaiah 40 do that for me almost immediately, every time I sit quietly and slowly with them:
12 Who else has held the oceans in his hand?
Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers?
Who else knows the weight of the earth
or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale?
13 Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord?
Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him?
14 Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice?
Does he need instruction about what is good?
Did someone teach him what is right
or show him the path of justice?
15 No, for all the nations of the world
are but a drop in the bucket.
They are nothing more
than dust on the scales.
He picks up the whole earth
as though it were a grain of sand.
16 All the wood in Lebanon’s forests
and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough
to make a burnt offering worthy of our God.
17 The nations of the world are worth nothing to him.
In his eyes they count for less than nothing—
mere emptiness and froth.