Encouragement From the God of Ages

We all need a spark of encouragement from time to time. And the truth is life, no matter how big it is, cannot deliver the type of encouragement we often need. There are not always the encouragers about, ready and willing to pick us up in our heap.

But encouragement from the God of Ages comes in this knowledge:

In comparison with the size of all things, and the significance in all things, and the state of all things, God is incomparable. In comparison to happiness and sadness, abuse and neglect, anxiety and loss, celebration and humiliation, there is no comparison when we compare God with all things. The Lord of glory, the King of Kings, the Saviour of the world, is incomparably mightier than our biggest of problems, challenges, and losses.

The trouble is we forget. We have bad memories.

Taking a Look at the Stars and Quarks

If we were to take 2 minutes and 34 seconds to contemplate the size of things, we would get a better gauge for the size of our problems. Our challenges, whilst they may be seen in proportion, are just as important to God as they are to us.

When we take a look at the stars, imagining the concept of size, and we recognise that God made all this, yet he stoops to remain interested in our losses, we understand a little more just how amazing God is.

The stars remind us how precious we are, that we, bodies no less significant than the greatest of heavenly stars, were created by a loving God.

Now imagine size at the opposite end of the scale; one of the smallest particles of matter is the quark. Our bodies are made of trillions of quarks—on a similar (almost-ballpark) scale to the number of stars in the universe.

God, the greatest engineer of all, the God of Ages who has strung creation from eternity to eternity, has all things in his hands—and, he loves us.

Our Problems in Perspective

God never underestimates the size of our problems. All of them are serious issues to the Lord. But put into perspective our problems transform in a moment. And whilst we might not be able to maintain this perspective we can draw encouragement from God anytime we wish. He cares!—even when others don’t.

This encouragement comes from the knowledge that we, along with every other created thing, have unique relevance and significance to the God of Ages.

Then we read our Bibles, hearing God’s Spirit say,

“Because you are precious in my sight,

and honored, and I love you...”

—Isaiah 43:4a,b (NRSV)

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God loves us. The Grand Designer and Engineer of the Universe has each of our lives safely in his hands. Despite our problems, pressures and pains we are loved. There is no better encouragement.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.