1 KINGS 8:27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!”
Years ago when the city fathers of New York contemplated the future growth of their city, they plotted
the streets and numbered them from the center outward. At the time, New York consisted of only six
or seven streets. In their planning maps, they projected how large they thought the city might grow.
Reaching beyond their wildest imagination, they drew streets on the map all the way out to a 19th
street. They called it “Boundary Street” because they were sure that was as large as New York City
would become. But history proved them to be shortsighted. At last count, the metropolis had reached
beyond 284th Street.
Solomon labored under no such delusions when it came to God. He had built the largest man-made
structure in Israel. (Interior dimensions of the temple were at least 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45
feet high, according to 1 Kings 6:2.) Yet this builder-king knew that even the heaven of heavens was
unable to contain God, not to mention a building. God was far larger than anything Solomon could
build.
In our desire to be intimate with God, we often try to shrink Him down to a size we’re comfortable
with. If God were too big, so our thinking goes, His awesomeness would threaten to overwhelm us.
Therefore, we are prone to think of God in the small, cuddly size–someone little enough to fit in our
back pocket.
Yet in doing so, we miss the comfort of knowing a God who is greater than any challenge life may set
before us, a God so majestic and exalted that everything else shrivels up into nothingness in
comparison.
Instead of downsizing God, let your imagination go and contemplate His true size. Imagine His filling
the whole universe. Picture His reaching out to the farthest stars and even then spilling over into the
outermost limits of space. Then kneel before Him and confess that, even so, your vision is still too
small.
THE UNIVERSE IS BIG; GOD IS BIGGER.