I was climbing once, well, at the time I was hanging from my harness about four hundred feet or so off the ground. Anyway, my partner turned to me and said, “I love climbing. Being here on the wall always makes me feel so small.” She paused before she said that last word; I think to let me know that it wasn’t just a size thing. This was a metaphysical small, a small that went past height and weight and really pinned you down in the scope of the universe. There we were: two tiny specs on a two-thousand foot granite rock face. It would be hard for a sane person not to feel small in that situation. Small and relatively helpless. But I didn’t feel small. I felt like me. Hanging from a wall hundreds of feet off the ground didn’t change that.
I’ve heard the same statement from people who were looking up at the stars. I’m not talking about city stars. Those don’t count because you can’t see enough of them to get a sense of depth. City stars are just pin holes in the black sheet that municipalities pay to cover their cities at night. I’m talking about back country stars. Countless flickering points of light arrayed en masse with a staggering sense of the infinite hanging between them. The kind where you can see the Milky Way cut through them, splitting the night sky like some sort of celestial felt rope. Those are the stars that make the night sky so impressive that people lean back and, with a sense of vertigo, say, “It makes me feel so small.” Looking at those stars with my friends, feeling the wondrous sense that the ground might slip out from beneath me, I don’t feel small. I feel like me.
I think the problem lies in perspective. We go through our lives concentrating so intensely on ourselves, our needs, our jobs, our universe of tin foil and construction paper, that we forget that we aren’t everything. I use the first person plural pronoun “we” because I’m just as guilty of unwitting self absorption as anyone else. We live in small worlds by necessity, limited geographically and mentally by the thousands of tasks that are required to make sure we’re warm, dry, fed, and entertained. And then, without warning, something happens that sends us spinning, shrinks us and our world until we’re staring up at everything else and wondering how it all got so big. The stars do that for some. Being strapped to a rock wall, hanging out in the air hundreds of feet off the ground, does it for others. Whatever it is, it forces a perspective shift. And then we feel small.
I don’t think this feeling small is a good thing. People associate size with worth. It’s okay for babies to be small, and it’s okay for computer chips to be small, but adults are not supposed to be small. There’s something distasteful about it. Just look at how we use the word. People are “small minded.” A “small man” is a man who lacks vision. Driving a small car makes you look European… well, you get my point.
Do you know why I didn’t feel small when I was on that rock wall or when I was looking at the tapestry called the night sky? I didn’t feel small because everything else was so amazingly, mind bogglingly big. That’ll make sense if you give me a minute. You see, in the midst of all that big stuff - those galaxies that stretch beyond my imagination, the trees that tower over me, the mountains that rise like titans from the ground - in the midst of all of that, I’m me. I am unique, there is no one quite like me, and I am loved by God. That sounds trite, I know, but I mean it. And, if you think about it for a minute, you might see where I’m coming from. You are you. There was no one, is no one, and will be no one else quite like you, and God loves that person.
So now you’re thinking about you. Expand that thought. Hold the image of yourself in your mind as you let the rest of creation seep into your mental picture. See the redwoods, the Rockies, the Chicago Bulls, heck, see Chicago, but always hold yourself in that picture. See earth, one planet amongst billions, see the Milky Way, one galaxy amongst countless others, but see yourself too. You probably seem awfully small in that picture, not even a spec really. Then add this one more element, this one key piece to your picture: God loves you. God, the creator of everything that you’ve pictured and plenty of things you’ve never heard of, loves you. He knows how you like your coffee, what your favorite color is, if you really floss nightly (despite what you tell the dentist). He knows you, made you, and loves you for you. That last statement never really meant all that much to me until I put it into context. You see, when I look at the width and breadth of creation, all the big impressive stuff along with all the little, less impressive stuff, and say to myself “God loves me,” I don’t really feel all that small. I don’t feel very big either. I just feel like… me.
I’ve heard the same statement from people who were looking up at the stars. I’m not talking about city stars. Those don’t count because you can’t see enough of them to get a sense of depth. City stars are just pin holes in the black sheet that municipalities pay to cover their cities at night. I’m talking about back country stars. Countless flickering points of light arrayed en masse with a staggering sense of the infinite hanging between them. The kind where you can see the Milky Way cut through them, splitting the night sky like some sort of celestial felt rope. Those are the stars that make the night sky so impressive that people lean back and, with a sense of vertigo, say, “It makes me feel so small.” Looking at those stars with my friends, feeling the wondrous sense that the ground might slip out from beneath me, I don’t feel small. I feel like me.
I think the problem lies in perspective. We go through our lives concentrating so intensely on ourselves, our needs, our jobs, our universe of tin foil and construction paper, that we forget that we aren’t everything. I use the first person plural pronoun “we” because I’m just as guilty of unwitting self absorption as anyone else. We live in small worlds by necessity, limited geographically and mentally by the thousands of tasks that are required to make sure we’re warm, dry, fed, and entertained. And then, without warning, something happens that sends us spinning, shrinks us and our world until we’re staring up at everything else and wondering how it all got so big. The stars do that for some. Being strapped to a rock wall, hanging out in the air hundreds of feet off the ground, does it for others. Whatever it is, it forces a perspective shift. And then we feel small.
I don’t think this feeling small is a good thing. People associate size with worth. It’s okay for babies to be small, and it’s okay for computer chips to be small, but adults are not supposed to be small. There’s something distasteful about it. Just look at how we use the word. People are “small minded.” A “small man” is a man who lacks vision. Driving a small car makes you look European… well, you get my point.
Do you know why I didn’t feel small when I was on that rock wall or when I was looking at the tapestry called the night sky? I didn’t feel small because everything else was so amazingly, mind bogglingly big. That’ll make sense if you give me a minute. You see, in the midst of all that big stuff - those galaxies that stretch beyond my imagination, the trees that tower over me, the mountains that rise like titans from the ground - in the midst of all of that, I’m me. I am unique, there is no one quite like me, and I am loved by God. That sounds trite, I know, but I mean it. And, if you think about it for a minute, you might see where I’m coming from. You are you. There was no one, is no one, and will be no one else quite like you, and God loves that person.
So now you’re thinking about you. Expand that thought. Hold the image of yourself in your mind as you let the rest of creation seep into your mental picture. See the redwoods, the Rockies, the Chicago Bulls, heck, see Chicago, but always hold yourself in that picture. See earth, one planet amongst billions, see the Milky Way, one galaxy amongst countless others, but see yourself too. You probably seem awfully small in that picture, not even a spec really. Then add this one more element, this one key piece to your picture: God loves you. God, the creator of everything that you’ve pictured and plenty of things you’ve never heard of, loves you. He knows how you like your coffee, what your favorite color is, if you really floss nightly (despite what you tell the dentist). He knows you, made you, and loves you for you. That last statement never really meant all that much to me until I put it into context. You see, when I look at the width and breadth of creation, all the big impressive stuff along with all the little, less impressive stuff, and say to myself “God loves me,” I don’t really feel all that small. I don’t feel very big either. I just feel like… me.
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