I have been known to be a bit clumsy. I am also a master of the understatement!
Today, when I was making myself a coffee I clumsily accidentally put too much in the cup. Not wanting to spread this surplus on the carpet, I decided to pour some of it out. It amazed me that, even though I poured out what seemed like a huge amount, the level in the cup seemed to go down very little indeed, so I had to pour out more. I realised that I had only been looking at the depth I had poured out, and that because of the surface area, the volume “seemed” much more. When I had seen the coffee pouring out I saw the three-dimensional volume; when I looked back at the cup, I saw only one dimension – the depth.
I remember talking to a friend years ago about dimensions. He said that dimension was very subjective. To a minuscule crawling insect, the world is actually flat. (If it managed to walk right round the world it would be very puzzled indeed, but fortunately such insects have very short memory.) The conversation went along the lines of the fact that, though, I am bigger than an insect, in the grand scheme of things, I am minuscule. That is why I am only aware of three dimensions. Maybe there are more?
Neither of us were Christians then, neither of us were even thinking of God at the time. But now I know that there is another dimension, the God Dimension. That is why I am told, “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10, NLT) My God knows and sees everything in the God Dimension, and understands in ways that we cannot comprehend. Everything is different through his eyes, because he can see the beginning from the end, the success in the failure, the healing in the sickness, the forgiveness for the sin, the light in the darkness.
The Israelites refused to go into the Promised Land because their scouts felt like grasshoppers among the giants (Numbers 13:33). They lost out because they were looking at life in the dimension of an insect. Do I do the same? Do I look at life in my little dimensional world, and feel flat, failing to look at it in the God Dimension? It is time for me to be still, and know that He is God. He is not a selfish God, he does not keep the God Dimension to himself – he wants me to know about it, to be still and know.