OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD
Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
For wisdom and might are His.
And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and secret things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And light dwells with Him.
For wisdom and might are His.
And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and secret things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And light dwells with Him.
Daniel 2: 20-22
As I rose to yet another beautiful, but tense, Jerusalem day this morning, I wondered what I could write about in my blog. It all starts to sound a bit repetitive, the terrorist incidents, incitement and tension. Sometimes it seems there is no light in all this, no hope of a better future. Its easy to begin to despair, lose faith and stop praying.
So it must have seemed to the Israelite captives of Babylon: their Temple destroyed and looted, the city of Jerusalem plundered and its inhabitants taken into captivity far away in the pagan city of Babylon. Where was their God? He must have seemed far away to them. Yet he had not abandoned them. He was preparing for them a great future and from amongst the captives he raised up Daniel and his friends, who did not despair, but put all their hope and trust in the God of their fathers. They prayed to their God, and He answered them with knowledge, revelation and wisdom, and at the right time He restored the people of Israel back to the Promised Land.
So let's not stop praying.
It helps sometimes to consider the awesomeness and majesty of our God. Nothing is impossible for him.
Consider this: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." Genesis 1:1. This simple sentence embodies things unimaginable and infinitely awesome. Traditional Christian and Jewish theology has long taught us that God created the universe from nothing - even though in our human experience all things come from some pre-existing thing. But not the Universe. Modern scientific discoveries have confirmed this idea. Physicists now believe that for every particle of matter that exists, there is a particle of antimatter, and if a particle of matter comes together with a particle of antimatter they will annihilate each other. In other words, the sum total of all the matter in the Universe is zero. God separated out the matter from the antimatter and made the Universe as we know it. How amazing it is to contemplate this - everything that exists in our world came from nothing, at the word of our God who created all things and sustains them.
Just think a moment about the immensity of the Universe.
Our sun is a medium sized star on the Orion Arm of the vast galaxy we call the Milky Way. There are somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars in our galaxy. How many is a billion? Its impossible for us to imagine such a number. We cannot even imagine a million.
It would take us about 11.5 days to count to a million at a rate of one per second, no stops. So how many is a billion? It depends where you live. In some countries a billion is a million million, but in others it is a thousand million. It doesn't matter which billion you use, because we cannot really imagine either number. Yet given that it is estimated that there are at least 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe, each holding an average of some 100-400 billion stars, there are something like a septillion (10 followed by 24 zeros) stars in the observable universe. And beyond the observable universe? No one knows.
Thousands of galaxies in a small part of the Universe as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope
(each point of light is not a star but a galaxy)
The famous image above pictures that tiny part of the sky that could be blotted out by a sand grain on the end of your finger at arms length. If there are that many galaxies in such a small portion of the sky, how many are there all together?
Its pretty hard to get any sense of the immense scale of the universe. Here is a YouTube clip that gives us a mind boggling idea (each circle represents a ten-fold increase in scale)
“There are one million grains of sand in
a handful of sand… There are more stars in the universe than all the sand on
the sand on all the beaches on Earth”
BBC documentary “The Planets”
And our God made them all!!!!! What an awesome God we have. God in his discourse with Job, challenged him saying,
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 38: 4-7
How sad it is that most of us never really look at the stars. Indeed most of us live in cities where there is so much light and air pollution it is impossible to see very many stars at all. A few years ago, I was in New Zealand and one cold, frosty night my sister-in-law and I went up onto a hilltop, far from any town or city, to try and photograph the Aurora Australis (the Southern Lights) which were playing at the time. I remember being 'blown away' by the multitude of stars in the sky and their incredible beauty. After years in the polluted northern hemisphere I had forgotten their splendor. I came home again with a renewed sense of God's majesty and power.
How amazing it is that this creator God, takes any interest at all in our puny human affairs. I can only echo King David, the friend of God, who cried out thus:
O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
Psalm 8: 1, 3-5
And yet, God does care for every one of us. Jesus said,
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Matthew 10: 29-31
Meanwhile, over the last week, we have also continued to suffer terrorist attacks here in Jerusalem and elsewhere. On Tuesday I was driving home thinking to myself (foolishly!) that things seemed to be calming down here in Jerusalem, when news came in of a 'vehicular attack' near the Strings Bridge, at the entrance to Jerusalem. A terrorist had rammed his car into a group of people waiting at a bus stop and injured 8, including a pregnant woman and her 18 month old son. The little boy's foot was severed and later had to be amputated below the knee.
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| The aftermath at the site of the attack near the Strings Bridge (the car also struck a water hydrant) http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=321071 |
Yesterday another attack took place in Ranaana when a terrorist stabbed people at a synagogue, injuring three, one seriously. Last night a group of armed Palestinians fired at an IDF post but there were no casualties. Today a woman attempted to attack a soldier outside Hebron but she was shot and captured. A tourist was also stabbed in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, today but it transpired it was criminal rather than political, a result of an argument over money.
And so it goes on - day after day. Please keep praying for us, and especially for those who have been injured and affected personally by all these attacks. Pray for our police, soldiers and rescue services who daily put their lives at risk to protect us all. Pray especially for one of my students, aged only 16, who was amongst the ' MADA (ambulance service) first responders' at the Strings Bridge attack, and is suffering trauma as a result. Keep praying that God will watch over our borders, cover us and protect us from all our enemies. Pray too for our enemies who have raised themselves up against God. They may win a few battles but in the end they will face judgment. God has decreed it. Daniel rightly said, "He removes kings and raises up kings". Whatever our enemies may plan against us, God is for us and He is all powerful.
Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”
Psalm 2: 1-6
Hallelujah, God has set His King, Yeshua the Messiah, upon the Holy Hill of Zion. It is already done in the heavenlies, and one day soon the King will return to establish his holy kingdom on Earth and bring peace to all men.
HALLELUJAH
