Last Tuesday, I took an amazing trip. I was on a distant swift journey towards Earth! As I began, Earth appeared as but a timeless, seemingly lifeless point of light on a black background, surrounded by countless similar lights.
And mine was a very strange journey, for the minute size of the Earth was not only the result of my being light years distant, but of my infinitely larger size, for the Earth was a mere fleck of dust in comparison to my enormity. My journey involved traversing space and time, approaching Earth not only in relative distance but also in relative size.
I descended, closer and closer, until the Earth became a solid recognizable mass, a swirling blue and white ball of liquid and matter, cushioned in a life sustaining gaseous atmosphere. Descending and shrinking further, I saw distinct bodies of water separating masses of green and brown firmament.
The swift momentum of my descent brought life into view. Birds inhabiting the air, then cities, at first indistinguishable, became defined into streets and buildings. The abundant evidence of life startled me. Movement everywhere! Cars, trucks, busses, trains. People walking, riding bikes, standing, sitting, talking, reading, sleeping, everywhere. I listened and watched, and as the momentum of my journey continued, I sensed the realities of life. I discerned charity and selfishness; I felt the presence of compassion and hatred; I saw peace and war; and in an instant, I was granted a vision of history: past, present, and future. In this swift moment, I realized the infinite diversity and sweetness of life. I wanted to stop and observe, to listen, to help. But the momentum of my trajectory could not be interrupted. The human life around me grew gargantuan as I journeyed in size out of sight.
Continuing on, I watched as I came closer and closer to the very substance of earth and life itself. I discerned great physical diversity and unity, biochemical structures and amazingly ordered pathways of life. I journeyed down, deeper into and through matter itself. Before me were portrayed, in a limitless diversity of arrangements, the very elements, the building blocks of all creation. Continuing on, I discovered that these basic elements were but swirling universes of atoms, electrons, quarks and other indistinguishable points of light and particles, dispersed and separated by vast regions of empty space. And I was startled by the familiar, timeless scene now before me. I felt as if I had arrived back where I had started. I had traversed from infinity to infinity, and had found a world, a universe that appeared the same whether viewed from an immense distance away or from a microscopic distance within.
Yet, I continued on, farther and deeper, into the darkness. And my mind started to wander. I began to reflect that there had been an important peak between the infinities of my journey, like a spike on a sharp bell-curve of life, reaching from the middle of existence upwards to the heavens, and yet extending endlessly on in both directions. And on the pinnacle of this spike, this peak, was man.
From the perspective of this apex, looking out upon the universe around him, man sees himself as the very center of everything, interpreting all that he sees and experiences as totally relative to and dependent in significance upon himself.
Yet, when viewed from the perspective of both infinities, large and small, distant and infinitesimally close, man becomes either a meaningless flaw in a limitless nothingness, or the pinnacle of providential expression in the immense, timeless mind of the Creator.
I had taken a spiritual journey, gazing at Earth, life, and man through the eyes of God, discovering with the eyes of faith that all exists, all is held together from infinity to infinity by the very Breath of His Love.
But then I was startled out of my journey. My swift momentum into the unknown was abruptly terminated when my large, yellow cat named Joe jumped into my lap. I returned quickly to reality, interrupted from slumber, to the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon strip from which my journey had begun.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -
all things were created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things,
and in Him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the Church;
He is the beginning, the first born from the dead,
that in everything He might be pre-eminent.
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of His cross.
Colossians 1.15-20