Perspective
Dan Kunz
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to travel to the western United States, you’ve had the opportunity to see some of the most breathtaking scenery on the planet. My wife and I just experienced some of it on our annual “excursion”. Every fall we take our motorhome on a trip to some part of the country to enjoy the wealth of beauty God has given us. Although we’ve traveled to the east and the south, the west remains our favorite destination. This year’s trip took us to western Colorado, where mountain country meets mesa country. As we traveled on Highway 285, headed for Gunnison, we crested a mountain and saw a magnificent valley, stretching out for miles and miles ahead of us. My wife summarized it by saying, “That takes my breath away!” Again and again over the next several days, we encountered sights that took our breath away – soaring mountain peaks, deep gorges, roaring waterfalls, and star-filled skies. It’s easy to feel pretty small and insignificant when faced with such sights!
From a purely earthly perspective, we are insignificant. Some analysts have estimated that over 117 billion people have inhabited the earth since the start of time. Do you know how many people are known or remembered a hundred years after their death? Ancestry.com notwithstanding, only a handful of people fit that description. When one considers how big our God is compared to earthly landscapes, it’s even more amazing that he knows us, loves us, and wants to spend eternity with us. Psalm 8:4 What is man that you remember him, the son of man that you pay attention to him? Now that should take our breath away! Bible passage after Bible passage reminds us of the brevity and relative insignificance of our lives, referring to us as “a speck of dust”, “grass that withers”, or “a drop of water”. Fortunately, even more Bible passages reference our significance to God.
The human mind is a wonderful instrument which many compare to a computer. As wonderful as it may be, we simply can’t comprehend the breadth, the depth, or the scope of God. With several billion people alive on the earth at any given point in time, how can God know, much less love, every single person? Mind blowing, but true! Isaiah 49:16 Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are never out of my sight. We are definitely not insignificant to our Heavenly Father. How do we know that? Besides the fact that he tells us again and again in his Word, he proved it through his actions. When faced with the possibility of spending eternity separated from his beloved children, he had to come up with a plan to save us. His perfect justice demanded that someone pay for all the sins committed against him. He couldn’t just “look the other way”. We couldn’t do it ourselves. We were the ones committing offenses against him. It would be like asking a drowning person to rescue themselves. The only possible solution was someone without sin paying the bill for everyone else and the only possible substitute was God himself, in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. This would be the ultimate sacrifice – God’s own Son in exchange for the very ones who rebelled against him!
Although the circumstances in which we find ourselves may make us feel completely unimportant, nothing is farther from the truth. God finds us important and loves us and nothing else matters! So the next time you see a mountain, the sky, or a vast desert, rather than focusing on your puny size, think of God’s enormous love. That is truly breathtaking!