The Sovereignty of God:
Something deeper than the unfathomable depths of the places you’ve never thought of.

You know, sometimes you just have to give up. Right now I feel like I have to give up on this subject. Not because it’s hopeless, but because it’s too big. I could go on to talk about how God created the ocean, Grand Canyon, or a daffodil. And you might say, “Oh, that’s nice,” not quite impressed that it is more exciting than watching llamas at the zoo. It always seems that we sell God short. Short, that is, to each other, the people at work, at home, or the people that we see on Sunday mornings when we socialize at church.

Frederick Buechner once wrote:
“All-wise. All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore to death both God and ourselves with our chatter. God cannot be expressed but only experienced.”

It’s like a man swimming in the ocean holding a Nalgene water bottle. Splashing around, the man manages to fill his bottle full of ocean water and screw the lid on. Out of glee the man holds up his water bottle and exclaims, “I have the ocean in here!” No, I’m sorry my friend. That is NOT the ocean. What you have is a bottle full of salty water, you’re swimming in the ocean…the ocean is much too big for you to contain in a bottle. You might splash around in the ocean, but if you’re not careful the ocean might swallow you.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) once prayed:
“You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea into which, the more I enter, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek. O abyss, O eternal Godhead, O sea profound, what more could you give me than yourself? Amen.”

The serendipity, the “surprise” for us is that the faculty of the Giver of life wants us to experience Him to depths that we don’t understand or can imagine. He’s invested much to give us the opportunity to experience the depths of Him, but we push that aside in view of our priorities. Somehow we devise plans that, we think, shape our destiny. We struggle to “make a name” for ourselves, to “create a niche.” We get bored with the silent times in life, when it is in the silence that God wants to speak to us. God wants us to get lost in Himself, but we fight to replace that possibility with potential of what WE think a “good life” is.

Now we come to a new morning to realize that we had been woven together in our mother’s womb. That we are known better than we can know. That we are loved more than we can love. That every second, every breath is a gift given by the Author of life.

I’ve been shaken tragically out of the “daily grind” of life. I am lost at sea, don’t bother looking for me.