o Lord your sea is so great and my boat is so small...

Last night's bible study on Identity in Salvation left me tossing and turning for a bit, so I figure I might as well put some thoughts to paper. The question was: What is significant about the fact that God has chosen us? Would it be different if we were randomly selected by God? Now, this sparked a discussion in my small group (and later in large group) about whether we are predestined for salvation or not. It was never my intention to argue that point.

While I feel that I was meant to be a Christian, I don't think I would (or more importantly, should) feel any differently were I randomly selected vs hand-picked by God. I don't feel like I'm qualified to argue about predestination, but I do know what I believe, and I do know how I feel. Would it be different if we were randomly selected by God? Should it be? As a Christian who knows the power of what God's done for us, what Ephesians would characterize as having loved us and given Himself up for us, shouldn't our hearts ache for those who don't know God's love for us? Should that heartache be any different if the circumstances surrounding how we were chosen were any different? It's not like I can begin to understand the vastness of God and the details around how or why I was chosen to be a Christian. You can’t conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God, says Graham Greene.

Last night, as I was tossing and turning, I was reminded of just how much of God I don't understand. When we do bible studies, when we have discussions about salvation and sin and God's will for us, I look to Isaiah and I'm reminded of the vastness of God and His universe and I wonder if it's even possible to comprehend even the smallest part of Him. Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being? declares the Lord. (Isaiah 66:1-2) One of the girls in Acacia pointed out an analogy a few years back that stuck with me: Imagine God's influence as a 3D hand, and our world and everything we understand as a 2D surface. When the fingers of the 3D hand touches the 2D surface, all we see are the five circles where the hand impacts the surface. Everything else about the 3D hand, we can't even experience, let alone understand.

There's an old French poem called the Breton Fisherman's Prayer that has a quote I'm particularly fond of:

Thy sea, O God, so great,

My boat so small...
Save as Thy goodness opens paths for me,
Through the consuming vastness of the sea.