Isaiah 40:26, "Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing."
Have you ever taken a good look at the stars? I mean a really good look? Before we moved to the "city" we lived in a country-like setting where the stars were pretty visible at night. I remember stepping out on my back porch many evenings and gazing at the stars and saying either out loud or to myself, "Lord, if you can keep each of those stars in place, and call them all by name, you can surely handle my problems." A sense of comfort would wash over me.
Suffering often causes us to be very self-focused. What looms large in our thinking and vision is our problems which tend to captivate much of our attention and drain our mental and emotional energy. If our problems are looming large in our thinking, then God is not. If we are captivated by them, then we are not captivated by Jesus Christ. "Sinclair Ferguson stated, we should 'expend our energies, admiring, exploring, expositing, and extolling Jesus Christ."1 Jerry Bridges penned the following prayer in his book, The Joy of Fearing God: "Lord, fill my heart and mind with awe and adoration as I think upon your greatness." When we mediate on God's majesty and greatness, it tends to put our problems in perspective.
One way to meditate upon the greatness of God is to consider the heavens. Take time to pause and gaze upon the stars. You can only see a speck of what it out there. On a really clear night, the naked eye can see 1-3 thousand stars, more depending on what hemisphere you live in. Even in ideal conditions and location it is still less than ten thousand stars. Bridges asked an astrophysicist how many stars are in the universe and this was his response: "there are about one hundred billion galaxies, each one containing about one hundred billion stars." (pg. 56) That's a lot of stars - yet God created them, sustains them and calls them each by name. Do you think He can handle your problems?
Diane
1 Sinclair Ferguson quoted in The Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney (pg.51)
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