Bless the English language, the word “scale” means a lot of different things.
As a verb, it means “to climb.” As a noun – a weighing apparatus, the overlapping plates that cover the outside of fish, or a set of musical notes on a staff.
But it also applies to the idea of perspective because “scale” measures and compares for us the size of… well, anything we want it to.
With that in mind, I share with you that I was flipping through the channels one night and caught a few minutes of a show on the ScyFy network, one I’d heard had quite the following but had never seen, Firefly. I watched it for a few minutes, recognizing the character from the movie Serenity that I had seen (and liked, fyi). For being a little cheesier than I expected, the television version entertained well enough.
Anyway, one of the scenes I caught featured River, the young lady whose mind is so brilliant she comes across a little… unsocial, and Shepherd, the religious character who totes and quotes the Bible as well as acts as sort of a guide/father-figure to the rest of the crew. Shepherd finds River tearing out pages of his Bible and marking notes in the margins. When he inquires what she’s doing, she says that she is “fixing” his Bible because it doesn’t make sense.
Okay, not a surprise that Hollywood makes this accusation. And Shepherd’s response only half satisfies.
But that’s not my point here. One of River’s conclusions was that there is a problem with Noah’s Ark, claiming that no boat is big enough to hold 500+ species of mammals.
I had to think about that for a second.
And then…
I thought about scale.
Rarely do humans think on the same scale as God does. In fact, I’d go as far as to say never. Never are we even able to think at His level. He is so BIG, that in comparison, what we know – even if we’re the smartest person in the galaxy – is miniscule.
A boat that fits on our known waterways, even the Pacific Ocean, may not be able to hold as many animals as Noah’s Ark claims to have held; but what about a boat built on a larger scale, one built for a larger waterway – a.k.a. the flooding of the entire world.
Just because we can’t picture it doesn’t make it false.
Besides challenging me to think on a larger scale, this perspective leads me to consider that #1 – although I don’t understand completely everything going on in this world, I can trust that God is in control because He operates on the grander scale, and #2 – the fact that this grander-scale God would lower Himself to tinier-scale me to care about the intimate details of my life… well, it fills my heart with gratitude.
What’s your perspective?
Happy Wednesday, Dry Ground friends!
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