The Incomparable Power of God

To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. (Isaiah 40:25-26 ESV).

Sunset in Yellowstone is an incredible sight. I’ve always thought that the sunset is God’s way of putting an exclamation point on the declaration of his power. Perhaps even more incredible is the transition of the vibrant color of sunset to the blackness of night in such a wilderness. When the ambient light from the cityscape where most of us live is removed we are able to see the night reveal the countless stars, brilliantly shining. That is the picture of the prophet’s declaration in our reading today. The prophet looking up at the star-filled sky and is stunned at the power of God to create and name and sustain every star in the heaven that he could see. I wonder what would be his worship today if he were shown that the nearest of those stars in his sky, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri, are 25 million million miles away, and that what he was seeing in his night sky was a tiny patch of our galaxy which has in it a hundred billion stars, and that beyond our galaxy there are millions of galaxies? It reminds me that this universe is nothing but the lavish demonstration of the incredible, incomparable, unimaginable exuberance and wisdom and power and greatness of God! God means for us to be stunned and awed by his work of creation; however, this is not for its own sake. He means for us always to look at his creation and say: If the work of his hands is so full of wisdom and power and grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like in himself! And, these are but the backside of his glory seen through a glass darkly. What will it be to see the Creator himself! Not his works! Not even a billion galaxies will satisfy the human soul. God and God alone is the soul's end. In the end it will not be the seas or the mountains or the canyons or the clouds or the great galaxies that fill our hearts to breaking with wonder and fill our mouths with eternal praise. It will be God himself. Perhaps this is the greatest reminder of any time we are able to spend in the spectacular vistas available to us in our national parks. We also are reminded that, as great as these things are, they are nothing compared to what we will experience in our eternal home which is even now being prepared specifically for us by God’s own hand. If he made this temporal creation so incredible, what must that eternal creation be like? None of the writers of the Bible had words to describe it. All they could do was praise the incomparable power of the Creator. We would do well to follow that example!