Isn’t our God beyond comprehension? Attempting to articulate His greatness and grandeur would take far more words (and depth) than our English language contains.
Psalm 29.1-4
Ascribe unto the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His Name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
One thing I have marveled about this Psalm of David is that the poet highlights and lifts up the voice of the Lord. He says that the voice of the Lord is over the waters, is powerful and full of majesty. Not the Lord Himself but merely His voice. If His voice is so great and grandiose, what do you think the Lord Himself is like? Beyond explanation.
There is a verse in Ephesians that I have fallen in love with. Paul is praying for the saints and declares he desires that they know “the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us” (1.19). I spent some time thinking about what the “immeasurable greatness” of God could mean and how you could even understand it. And a picture came to mind. If someone who has only ever lived in the middle of the Sahara desert came up to you and asked what the word “ocean” meant, how could you explain it to them by only showing them a single drop of water? How can someone’s mind who has no framework of any body of water even begin to comprehend what an ocean is – if they have only ever seen a single drop of water? How do you describe the endless wonders contained therein – fish, whales, sharks, coral, squid, icebergs, islands, a place to swim, a place of food, a place where you can take a massive ship of steel and float it upon the top? How do you describe such things by a single drop of water. To even try would surely confuse and bring laughter to such an idea!
God is much like that. We can only see a single drop of water – yet God is like an ocean compared to it. How are we to understand or begin to describe such a majestic and marvelous wonder? Instead, perhaps as the great Psalmist declared, we should “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His Name and worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.”