I love asking this question to children. It opens up all kinds of conversations and comparisons to the size of God. As we all know, a child most often defines size that is compared to a parent. Let me give you an illustration from my life.
I was working at one of the many children’s camps I’ve helped with over the years, and at this particular time it was a kid’s camp in Russia. So, I not only was working with children who had a limited grasp on life, but I was dealing with a language exchange also. My subject was ‘how big God was’. I had learned some of the key Russian words such as ‘big,’ ‘giant,’ ‘enormous,’ etc. So I began to ask them, ‘how big is God anyway?’ They were coming up with all kinds of comparisons such as ‘God’s bigger than my dad!’ ‘God’s bigger than my house!’ God’s bigger than a tall building.’ You get the point. I had great fun with this of course, but somewhere I had used a Russian word incorrectly (no great surprise), and instead of trying to say, “God is so enormous,” instead essentially, I said “God is really, really fat!” They all laughed and once I realized what I had done, I had to correct my language, and they had fun at my expense (one of the beautiful things about working with children in foreign languages is that you can grow closer to them by showing them how human you really are!) That said, I was NOT trying to tell the story of a ‘fat’ God – I was trying to teach about the enormous God of the universe that we could know personally.
This coming Sunday morning January 12th, I will be bringing us back to our study this year in the book of Mark. Our focus will be on Mark 6:1-6. In order to prepare yourself for our church family worship and study I urge you to read this story slowly and carefully and contemplate it. Some of the centerpiece issues and questions that arise out of this story are… “how big is God?” The real context of the story is actually “how big is Jesus?” — “Who do you say that Jesus really is? — and how big is HE?”
After many incredible encounters with people all over the region that we see in Mark chapters 1-5; after all the miracles of healings; after all the profound parables; after all the teaching with ‘authority’ that Jesus had done; Jesus came back home and was invited to speak in the synagogue, essentially His home church, among His family members and people who had known Him all His life. How they reacted to Jesus was based on how big they really thought God was. And for us, how big we believe Jesus is, and who Jesus really is in our lives determines everything about what we do with Him and how He works in us!
There are some fascinating comments in this passage that we need to get hold of as we too must come face to face with a grasp on ‘how big is God’ and ‘ who do I say that He is?’
I’ll see you Sunday morning for worship. Bring your Bibles. Prepare your hearts.
