If your image of God is that he is cruel, psycho, or hateful, I want to share something a little bit science-y with you.
I painted this on my basement wall. It shows the size of the Sun and Earth, to scale. The Earth is the dot the arrow is pointing at. It is the size of a quarter (I traced around one). The Sun, as you can see, is taller than my door, stretches higher than the ceiling and lower than the floor.
Earth would actually be three football fields away. Try to imagine standing in your doorway (like the one above) with a friend holding out a quarter from that far away. How small would it seem?
Yet the gravity of the Sun is so vast it can hold onto that quarter-sized planet from such a distance.
In fact, it’s so big you could fit one million Earths inside the Sun and still have extra room for them to jiggle around.
In the Bible, Jesus is compared with the Sun (Malachi 4:2, Revelation 1:16).
The size of the Sun compared to Earth is something like the size of Jesus compared to you and me. That would also be the size of his tenderness.
Notice the words tender and comfort in these verses.
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.” Isaiah 40:1-2a
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4a
And finally, Luke 1:78 speaks of “the tender mercy of our God.” Not just mercy, but tender mercy.
If we imagine God as a tyrant, like an alcoholic father, we have missed something important. Sure, he has some rules like any good leader. But if, for the past ten or twenty years God has mainly seemed angry, maybe take the next couple decades pondering his tenderness. Then things may seem more in balance.
Free Spirit Seed Company 