There Is A "You"--August 30, 2016
"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" [Psalm 8:3-4]
Go out where it is dark sometime.
I don't mean just your-front-porch-after-sunset while you take the trash cans back in from the curb or water your flowers when the sun is down. I mean, go to the dark where there are no street lights, no pole lights, no living room windows with big flat screen TVs shining out into the front yard. Go out from the city. Go out from any cluster of houses some night to a moment and place where it is really and truly dark. And watch for the stars.
And as countless pinpoints of light--all in subtly different hues of color--appear before your eyes in the sky, consider for a moment that even all those dots your eyes can see are but a tiny sliver of the stars in the universe. They are barely even a fraction of a fraction of the stars in our own local galaxy--and yet you can see more than your mind can number.
Now consider this--each of those tiny specks of light is a star--an object so massive, so huge, that its own weight has crushed its core to the point of starting nuclear reactions! Our own star, a middle-sized star, as these things go, is so vast that our entire planet could fit a million times inside its volume. And you have probably only seen a tiny fraction of a fraction of the wonders of just our planet.
And then, while you are considering all of this, eyes gazing up into the heavens, think about the fact that you are looking back in time as you look out at those stars. Each and every one of those lights in the sky is millions and millions of miles away--so far away that even light itself takes years and years to reach us. So the light you are looking at up on that starlit hillside in the country originated long, long ago--before you were born, and quite possibly before our planet was born, too. The scientists who measure these things say that there are objects out there that our best telescopes can glimpse, which are really the residual light from events and objects from the early days of the universe--think billions of years into the past! And in fact, they say, because the universe is expanding at an increasing rate (who can explain that one?), there are objects so distant that their light will never reach us, because the space between us and them keeps growing even faster than the traveling light can catch up to the expansion!
My goodness, this universe is a big place.
You don't notice that in daylight, perhaps, or when you are surrounded by the ambient light of neon signs, stoplights, and the glow of smart phone screens. Awash in all of the glow of commerce, we come to think we are pretty big deals in a pretty small world. We come to think that each of us is the center of things, and that everybody else had better pay attention to me because I am very important! We imagine that our work is the most important, that our needs are more pressing that the person's next door (or in a country halfway around the world). We pretend, then, that we are owed the things we have in this life, because, after all, we are such important, important folk--big fish in a small pond.
But, oh, the pond is so much larger than we ever imagined. And what's more, none of it ever had to be here. The universe--it didn't "have" to exist. Ask the smartest scientists in the world and they will tell you that there is no law of physics that requires that there HAD to be anything at all...
And yet there is. And there is a "you."
You and I, we didn't have to be. We didn't have to exist at all. Nobody owed us life, or even a shot at it. The universe did not require a Steve for all the rest of the protons to all be protons. But here I am. And alive, not only some desolate wasteland that can barely support me... but in a place of rich and infinite beauty, a world with so many colors, sights, sounds, flavors, and feelings, a world bursting with the amazing and unearned smell of rain and the sound of trickling water, and with the taste of cherries and the sight of golden fields of wheat rippling with the eddies in the wind at sundown. This is not just a big pond in which we live--it is a place of infinite beauty. And you are here, and I am here, to take it in.
Once you recognize that none of it was earned... and that all of it was given, as a masterpiece to care for and enjoy that has landed in our lap, free of charge, well, that does something to you. You realize you are graced... with life itself. There are so many things that had to happen just so in order to make the cosmos at all... how much more, for a world where you could live... and how much more, for you yourself in that world. Grace has a way of humbling us, and in the midst of that humbling, of making us grateful. All of a sudden you see things differently--every day as a free jackpot you have won with minutes you did not earn in which to live. All of a sudden you have the capacity to appreciate the simple gifts of breath... of good bread... of the knowing look of another human being which says, "I know what you are going through, and I share it..." without a single spoken word. All of a sudden your heart is changed--open to infinite beauty and goodness, open to wonder and awe, and aware that none of it is a prize for good behavior, but all of it is a gift of grace.
And when that happens, you come to extend grace to the other lucky-and-blessed humans who were graced to get to live on this world, too. You come to see that you don't have any rights to more than them. You come to see that they have been given a place on earth for their own lives and families and thriving, just as you have. You come to see that, in a world that didn't have to exist at all, each breath is a gift. And if it is a gift, well then there is a mighty generous Giver behind it all, underneath and before all things, who gives us these free gifts by sheer love. And in fact, the Giver did not stop with just making a world full of "things" to let us play with... but that the Giver is also the Gift, and the Giver came among us, as one of us, offering himself up beyond our deserving as well.
Well, think about all of that today... and, well, you will be changed. So go ahead... go out into the dark tonight, and let grace change your heart.
Lord God, amidst the infinite reaches of the universe, you have set us in a good place, and you have said you love us. Let us dare to believe that, and to live gratefully for all that you have lavished upon us. Let the gratitude for your gifts of grace make us stand out.
Go out where it is dark sometime.
I don't mean just your-front-porch-after-sunset while you take the trash cans back in from the curb or water your flowers when the sun is down. I mean, go to the dark where there are no street lights, no pole lights, no living room windows with big flat screen TVs shining out into the front yard. Go out from the city. Go out from any cluster of houses some night to a moment and place where it is really and truly dark. And watch for the stars.
And as countless pinpoints of light--all in subtly different hues of color--appear before your eyes in the sky, consider for a moment that even all those dots your eyes can see are but a tiny sliver of the stars in the universe. They are barely even a fraction of a fraction of the stars in our own local galaxy--and yet you can see more than your mind can number.
Now consider this--each of those tiny specks of light is a star--an object so massive, so huge, that its own weight has crushed its core to the point of starting nuclear reactions! Our own star, a middle-sized star, as these things go, is so vast that our entire planet could fit a million times inside its volume. And you have probably only seen a tiny fraction of a fraction of the wonders of just our planet.
And then, while you are considering all of this, eyes gazing up into the heavens, think about the fact that you are looking back in time as you look out at those stars. Each and every one of those lights in the sky is millions and millions of miles away--so far away that even light itself takes years and years to reach us. So the light you are looking at up on that starlit hillside in the country originated long, long ago--before you were born, and quite possibly before our planet was born, too. The scientists who measure these things say that there are objects out there that our best telescopes can glimpse, which are really the residual light from events and objects from the early days of the universe--think billions of years into the past! And in fact, they say, because the universe is expanding at an increasing rate (who can explain that one?), there are objects so distant that their light will never reach us, because the space between us and them keeps growing even faster than the traveling light can catch up to the expansion!
My goodness, this universe is a big place.
You don't notice that in daylight, perhaps, or when you are surrounded by the ambient light of neon signs, stoplights, and the glow of smart phone screens. Awash in all of the glow of commerce, we come to think we are pretty big deals in a pretty small world. We come to think that each of us is the center of things, and that everybody else had better pay attention to me because I am very important! We imagine that our work is the most important, that our needs are more pressing that the person's next door (or in a country halfway around the world). We pretend, then, that we are owed the things we have in this life, because, after all, we are such important, important folk--big fish in a small pond.
But, oh, the pond is so much larger than we ever imagined. And what's more, none of it ever had to be here. The universe--it didn't "have" to exist. Ask the smartest scientists in the world and they will tell you that there is no law of physics that requires that there HAD to be anything at all...
And yet there is. And there is a "you."
You and I, we didn't have to be. We didn't have to exist at all. Nobody owed us life, or even a shot at it. The universe did not require a Steve for all the rest of the protons to all be protons. But here I am. And alive, not only some desolate wasteland that can barely support me... but in a place of rich and infinite beauty, a world with so many colors, sights, sounds, flavors, and feelings, a world bursting with the amazing and unearned smell of rain and the sound of trickling water, and with the taste of cherries and the sight of golden fields of wheat rippling with the eddies in the wind at sundown. This is not just a big pond in which we live--it is a place of infinite beauty. And you are here, and I am here, to take it in.
Once you recognize that none of it was earned... and that all of it was given, as a masterpiece to care for and enjoy that has landed in our lap, free of charge, well, that does something to you. You realize you are graced... with life itself. There are so many things that had to happen just so in order to make the cosmos at all... how much more, for a world where you could live... and how much more, for you yourself in that world. Grace has a way of humbling us, and in the midst of that humbling, of making us grateful. All of a sudden you see things differently--every day as a free jackpot you have won with minutes you did not earn in which to live. All of a sudden you have the capacity to appreciate the simple gifts of breath... of good bread... of the knowing look of another human being which says, "I know what you are going through, and I share it..." without a single spoken word. All of a sudden your heart is changed--open to infinite beauty and goodness, open to wonder and awe, and aware that none of it is a prize for good behavior, but all of it is a gift of grace.
And when that happens, you come to extend grace to the other lucky-and-blessed humans who were graced to get to live on this world, too. You come to see that you don't have any rights to more than them. You come to see that they have been given a place on earth for their own lives and families and thriving, just as you have. You come to see that, in a world that didn't have to exist at all, each breath is a gift. And if it is a gift, well then there is a mighty generous Giver behind it all, underneath and before all things, who gives us these free gifts by sheer love. And in fact, the Giver did not stop with just making a world full of "things" to let us play with... but that the Giver is also the Gift, and the Giver came among us, as one of us, offering himself up beyond our deserving as well.
Well, think about all of that today... and, well, you will be changed. So go ahead... go out into the dark tonight, and let grace change your heart.
Lord God, amidst the infinite reaches of the universe, you have set us in a good place, and you have said you love us. Let us dare to believe that, and to live gratefully for all that you have lavished upon us. Let the gratitude for your gifts of grace make us stand out.
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