Everlasting Otherness

Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90:2

I have recently inherited a great gift. A dearest friend has relinquished into my care his entire professional library. I'm not kidding! We're talking lots of dollars and hours of reading and study in commentaries, contemporary issues, classics and "new" classics. I am in agony. So many books, so little time! I'm fantasizing about shelving.

Besides the deep gratitude that comes with such a gift, I am impressed with a daunting sense of how small is my brain. Just sorting through this treasure will take hours, let alone any concept of being able to read and absorb all the knowledge that is written in the bizillions of words contained between the covers.

Okay, I know. I'm not supposed to actually read them all. Lots of what I am now desperately trying to find shelf space for is meant to provide research information to facilitate further learning (yes, I will graduate one day!) and hopefully offer some crumbs of insight to the extremely patient people who kindly listen each week to "loaves and fishes" I bring to the pulpit Sunday after Sunday. Many of the books will be for sharing with fellow-journeyers as we explore ideas and attitudes and issues together. Others will provide timely quotes from smarter brains and deeper souls.

But still. The sheer volume of the volumes is mind numbing.

Reminds me of infinity even though it's hardly close.

Right now I have the happy task of pondering such things as the creation of the universe. Highview is making our way through a six week series in Genesis; creation, beginnings, patriarchs, all of that. So again this morning, already starting the very early hours, I've been meditating, reading and thinking - confronted again with the sheer volume of the volume of God.

He's endless words of everlasting otherness, my God. His ideas and phrases and paragraphs have no beginning and no end. He keeps on writing and composing the story - my story, your story, His story - history, breathing His life into every understanding, every scene. And He writes Himself into the drama of it all. Composer and principle player. But in some crazy way, He lets me - and you - be the star.

The night I received the books, I sat under the stars with my friend for a bit and we talked for a long time. God is in everything, we decided, having contemplated the clear October sky and the dramatic events of our lives as friends these past two years. We spotted Him everywhere in the story, even in the acts where He's offstage, so to speak, hidden, but Present. And it goes on and on. From everlasting to everlasting. And the friendship itself sat still in the Everlasting Otherness.

I think there is a library in Heaven. I do. And I think that's where I'll find the time, finally, to read all the books. And I think that's when so much time will still never be enough for so much God.