Perspective

Part of me sees God as distant... and He is. It's true. Criminy!

It's all so large. So very large. So large it cannot be constrained, not even by the speed of light.

If you ask a Christian about God, they will nearly always talk about a personal God.

That's only part of it, of Him.

It is difficult for many to imagine the scale of the universe.

It is at least 27 billion light years across. That means, at it's current size, it would take 27 billion years for light to travel that distance.

How fast is light? Pretty quick.

To travel from Portland, Oregon to Sydney, Australia at the speed of light would take less than 0.025 seconds.

Pretty quick.

The matter of the universe once went faster than that, and, in a way, will do so again.

Just after the Big Bang matter raced outward faster than light... a universe of matter too dense and too hot for the four laws of physics to exist, so, the laws, having not yet been created, weren't "enforced". Didn't last long, but still... that is how it all got to be so darn large.

Soon baby galaxies formed, globs of stars, mostly enormously large stars gobbled up their hydrogen fuel in only a few million years before collapsing and rebounding, seeding the universe with new elements, which in turn formed into new stars, which lived nearly as short lives, and repeated the cycle (our sun is about 4.5 billion years old because it is much more moderate in size and is eating its cosmic meal with more appropriate, sedate manners).

The early galaxies formed around enormous black holes jetting material at speeds so great they are still "seen" at enormous distances (therefore times) shouting with the power of a trillion stars.

Today things have become somewhat more settled... galaxies are clumping together, but... the universe continues to expand (at an ever increasing rate).

The distances between the galaxies grow further apart like dots on an expanding balloon.

Can you see how the dots have moved apart from each other?

And while nothing within the universe travels faster than light, not relative to anything near it, the accumulative speed of all of it together, from one side to the other, will eventually add up to a speed greater than light. Eventually the further edges will begin to disappear from our telescopes as they recede.

It is my conviction, without demonstrable proof, that God is within, through, and outside all of this, and indeed, holds it all together.

So, when one asks a Christian about God, and the answer is about a personal God, I feel that is only a small (pun intended) part of it.

I think God is interested in larger things as well.

I think God is not only closely following the spiritual growth and exploits of individuals, and of nations, but of civilizations and our species as a whole.

God is BIG.

God has held the universe close to Him, as it was born leaping instantly to a fullness faster than light, of how it toddled through its goofy globular galaxies with its infant cries of quasars...

Yet...

Yet on many occasions... many times... I have felt His eye on me.

I have felt His breath on the back of my neck.

It is terrifying.

Yet even in those moments when I have felt that intense gaze, I also felt warmed by a love as large as the universe.

So large.

So complete.

So free.

He is a personal God. ...A being of such enormous consciousness and love and power... yet with an awareness of things, beings, so minute, that such love in its enormity is so alien to my ability to love.

The universe isn't static. It has gone through many changes, stages, and has more change ahead of it. Time unfolds in the direction of ever increasing entropy, but I am certain He is outside it as well... and takes joy in the entire work of creativity.

Pretty cool.

Pretty big, and pretty cool.

I like the perspective.