From Tom Drake, Johannesburg
We humans make judgments about phenomena relative to our own capabilities. Anything outside our experience is not easily understandable, sometimes not even acceptable to us.
Those of us with 20/20 vision, for instance, find it hard to accept that some birds are able to see four or five times further than we can, that the clarity with which they see things is far better than ours, that they have greater perception of movement than we do.
It is difficult to accept that, should we have line-of-sight vision for 2km, that they would be able to see for eight or ten kilometre—with great clarity!
So perhaps this might help us to start accepting the reality of many things and events beyond our limited experience. Like God, for instance, and his greatness.
We have been told that God made us in his own image and likeness, which should mean that he is something like us. I don’t know about that, but I do believe that he must be something awesome.
Science is continually finding out more and more about the universe, and the more they discover the more wondrous God becomes for me. He grows in my mind as his creation expands—or rather my understanding of it. But the part that becomes more and more wondrous to me is that, in this unimaginably huge universe which is God’s creation, he is aware of me. He knows me, he understands me. And not only me, but every single creature to which he has given life, ever!
The consideration of this makes the mind boggle. Nothing could have that ability, that omniscience. But then I come back to the bird analogy, inadequate though it may be. If I, in my arrogance, find it difficult to accept a scientifically established fact regarding the superiority of a bird’s sight in comparison with a human’s, does that not parallel my inability to understand the truly awesome wonder of God?
My mind cannot encompass it—but then, my mind was not meant to, any more than my eyesight was intended to equal that of a bird’s.
God is great!
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