I can hardly believe it is almost December! We had an amazingly stable string of days and weeks with high temperatures in the 50s, which was perfect fall weather, but it dropped suddenly from 87° one day to the 50s the next, which made it seem awfully cold. However, that same 50° will seem mighty warm next month!
Is 57° warm or cold? It depends on how cold or warm it has been. I had the opportunity to teach some astronomy to the Royal Rangers a few weeks ago, and we were trying to wrap our heads around the vast distances between the stars and galaxies. Ten miles is a long way if you are running or walking. Then you imagine the circumference of the earth, around 24,000 miles. That’s big! Or is it? The distance to the sun is 93 million miles. It takes light, moving at 186,000 miles per second, more than 8 minutes to go from the sun to us on Earth. That same light takes more than four YEARS to reach the next nearest star! That is a mind-boggling distance, and we are still talking about the objects in our galaxy that are close to us.
Traveling our galaxy from one end to the other, at the speed of light, would take over 100,000 years. The major galaxy nearest to ours is Andromeda . … 2.5 MILLION light-years away. And we are just getting started. So is 10 miles a long way? Depends on if you are running or measuring planetary distances. Is 4 light years a short distance? It is, if you are comparing it to the size of the Universe.
Is a million dollars a lot of money? Depends on if you are me or Bill Gates. Is a paintball hard or soft? Soft enough to crush between my finger and thumb; hard enough to leave a significant welt if fired from a paintball gun. So many of the things we experience, we experience relatively. So few absolutes. Something can be better, worse, nearer, farther, more, less, etc. Depending on what you are coming from or comparing to, the same thing means different things to even the same people. We “froze” when the temperature dropped from 87° to 60°. We will peel off our coats and even don shorts when the temperature spikes from 30° to 60°.
Outside of all this is our God. He is always higher, better, stronger, kinder, righter; because He, in His nature, is highest, best, strongest, kindest, most righteous. The only thing relative about God is our perception of Him, and that has everything to do with us. All of this distance, all space and time, were created by Him. As time-bound creatures, it is hard for us to truly grasp the idea of a God who exists independent of time and space, and that is just one of the things I love about Christmas.
God, the creator of time, space, and matter, entered time and space, took on matter, and became a man. Jesus, God the Son, by whom God the Father created the heavens and the earth, walked this earth as a man. He took on flesh, ate our food, and ultimately bore all our sufferings and sin in His flesh. And while the conception was supernatural, He began this mission as a baby, born like all babies, from a human, natural mother.
He was and remains sinless, perfect, and the only true standard of good, of love, of power. Everything else in life can be compared to something bigger, better, farther, etc., and therefore can be considered relative. He alone is incomparable.
King David said, “I will not worship the Lord with that which cost me nothing.” Likewise, God did not save us with that which cost Him nothing. In this year of giving, let us say wholeheartedly, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.”
Merry Christmas, and God’s richest blessings to you and yours,
