big

it was midnight pancakes at ihop and i was turned towards sideways in my chair, listening so intently to owen and tim, so entranced that my mouth hung open. owen is taking astronomy and tim has been watching these space/physics videos and they were discussing the magnitude, the mindshattering magnitude, of space and the universe.

you mean to tell me gravity bends time? that outside of the earth's gravitational field, time operates differently? wait. black holes are real? and a planet can be so heavy that in folds in on itself, time after time after time until it becomes a solid sphere of...weight? and you mean that the galaxies are so large, so long, that we will never ever come to the end of them? and you're telling me that the likelihood of the earth coming into existence, so perfect as it is, is something like the likelihood of throwing a dart into space and hitting a penny from millions of miles away?

you say that the fact that we can even see out through our atmosphere to other planets and galaxies is a rarity. that we even have an atmosphere that supports life is miraculously rare. that the gravitational pull of the sun allows us to move freely, yet not be crushed--how precisely perfect is that? and that the elements and sunlight and that our bodies operate so intricately and that we can survive on this planet with so little, that this earth even exists, its ohwow.

and then, we come to ourselves.

we, so frail and minuscule, in the grand scheme of the universe, we are alive, aren't we? and why?

i cannot believe it was an accident. that this came to be, due to one impossibly unlikely series of evolutionary events after another. i cannot believe in that.

where else do i turn but my creator? not just any, but my own. i have searched the other religions, the other alternate religious explanations for our life and existence, and they all disappoint.

church today was a feast. one eye was on all of this, the reminder: don't forget how abnormal this existence you have is, how brilliantly unlikely it is that you exist at all, and that at this moment you sit on a pew and breathe air in complete comfort. i looked out into the grandness of physical creation and was crushed by the implications of such a ridiculously massive world. whoever made it is so infinitely larger, and i quake to think that i am in his presence.

we worshiped and sang and prayed and learned, and all the while: don't forget. the universe is really, really big.so big. and YET. jesus christ made his pilgrimage here? to a place a few thousand (easliy travel-able) miles from where i now sit? ohwow.

after church, i asked one of the pastors if there might be other earths with other creations in another dimension, or if maybe there were other gods with other universes entirely separated from this one. this earth is working out like a play, and it feels so real to us, the actors, and maybe it is real. quite real. but the director acts from a different dimension, and he sees the actual world as it really is. perhaps he directs other plays. the pastor looked a bit uncomfortable and assured me that the biblical god's existence was not compatible with the existence of other gods, and i shook my head in agreement. i was only throwing it out there.

i'm still reeling. that too, is okay.

i'm dismantled by the bigness of all of this, at the experience of questions so large i never previously dared to run my hand over them. this weekend, i opened them and searched them. i'm left too small to take it in, to quite swallow it up. but my wavering is stabilized becuase i've found something that points me straight to jesus and demands me realize, he is real, all he says is real.

reality is what i've been seeking for.

i go to google and don't even know what to type, how to search for websites that will describe for me more all of these big things. i scroll through images taken by satellites, pictures i've previously ignored. another wave of realization comes now--these things are sacred, and you have not done them justice. so i have not. i write all of this from an imcomplete perspective, and i am eager to learn more of the implications of god's big creation. that is coming, but for now, this is where i am.

big world means big god.