The Elephant in the Universe

 What happens when the God we believe in becomes too small?

In this episode of Beyond Belief, we take a journey into one of the biggest questions of faith: How big is the God you believe in?

Sometimes, without realising it, we reduce God to something manageable — a God who fits neatly into our explanations, our expectations, our politics, our problems and even our prayer lists. But what if we've forgotten the sheer scale, mystery and majesty of the God we claim to worship?

In “The Elephant in the Universe,” we explore what it means to encounter a God who cannot be contained by our understanding.

From a deeply personal moment on Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, to the overwhelming encounter between Job and God in Job 38, this episode explores faith, doubt, suffering, awe, humility and the mystery of an infinite God who is somehow still intimately involved in our lives.

We talk about:

• Why we so often try to make God smaller and more manageable
• What Job's encounter with God can teach us about suffering and unanswered questions
• The difference between having answers and knowing Someone big enough to hold the questions
• Why awe and wonder matter to our spiritual lives
• How our modern access to information can sometimes diminish our sense of mystery
• What it means to practice “cosmic humility”
• How to expand the way we pray
• Why surrendering control doesn't mean giving up hope
• How remembering that “God is bigger than this” can change the way we face anxiety, uncertainty and difficult circumstances
• And perhaps the most important question of all: Have we made God too small?

The God who holds the universe is also the God who knows your name.

You may be small in the scale of the cosmos — but you are not insignificant. You are seen, known and loved.

A small God makes us anxious. A big God makes us brave.

If you've ever struggled with doubt, grief, unanswered prayer, suffering, anxiety, or simply wondered whether there is more to faith than easy answers, this episode is for you.

Welcome to Beyond Belief — a space for people who believe, people who doubt, people who aren't sure what they believe anymore, and anyone who has ever thought:

“There has to be more than this.”

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If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who needs to remember that they are held — and that God is bigger than this.

 🎵 Music Credit

Light Awash by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100175

Artist: Kevin MacLeod
http://incompetech.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

There is a moment when the ground beneath your feet stops feeling solid, when the stars you've stopped noticing suddenly remind you that they're still burning, when the God you've spent years trying to understand breaks through the box you've built for him. Welcome to Beyond Belief. Today, we are remembering something most of us have forgotten: how big our God really is. Let me tell you about the worst sermon I ever preached. I was standing in front of a room of maybe 40 people in a borrowed building that smelled like stale coffee and floor wax. And I was trying to explain the Trinity using an apple. Yeah, an apple. The peel was God the Father, the flesh was Jesus, and the seeds were the Holy Spirit. I remember looking out at those faces, polite, confused, probably wondering whether there was going to be a quiz at the end. And I had a thought that still haunts me. I have made God so small. I taken the infinite, the uncontainable, the one who spoke light into being before physics existed, and I turned him into produce. And I wonder how many of us are walking around with a God who fits in our pocket. A God we can explain at dinner parties, a God who agrees with our politics, approves of our comfort, answers our questions, and never ever surprises us. Today, we're going elephant hunting. And I promise you, we're going to find him. Welcome to Beyond Belief. If this is your first time here, I'm genuinely glad you found us. This is a space for the spiritually curious, for people who believe, people who doubt, people who aren't sure what they believe anymore. And anyone who's ever looked at their life and thought, there has to be more than this. We're not here to hand out easy answers. We're here to chase wonder, to sit with mystery, to ask better questions, and every now and then, hopefully, to have our minds blown by a God who refuses to be domesticated. Before we dive in, would you do me a favor? If this episode moves you, and I think it might, share it with someone who needs to remember how big God is. That's how this community grows. One conversation at a time. Alright. Let's start the story. I'm standing on the slopes of Table Mountain. It's just before six in the morning. The kind of coal that gets into your fingers before you've even realized it's cold. Cape Town is still mostly asleep below me. The city lights are scattered across the darkness. The Atlantic is barely visible beyond them. And above me, Table Mountain disappears into the night. And I'm alone. Which, if you know me, is unusual. I'm a people person. I like noise. I like conversation. But something pulled me out of bed in the dark, brought me up here, and here I am. And I'm angry. I don't realize it at first. I think I'm just tired. But as the first light begins to appear over the horizon, this impossible line of gold slowly pushing back the darkness, I realize I'm furious. At God, at the universe, at whatever force is running this whole operation. Because a few weeks earlier, I had to say goodbye to somebody I loved. And I'd prayed every prayer I knew. I'd claimed every promise. I'd stood on scripture and thought there were guarantees. And God, at least the God I thought I knew, had let me down. So I'm standing there, arms crossed, basically daring the sunrise to impress me. And slowly, slowly, Table Mountain begins to wake up. First the rock, dark shapes becoming visible as the light grows, the enormous cliffs, the layers of texture, the sheer scale of it. And then I look out. Cape Town is spread beneath me, the city, the coastline, the ocean stretching away towards the horizon. And suddenly everything I was carrying feels small. Not unimportant, just small. Then the clouds begin to move across the mountain, mist pouring over the ridges, the wind moving around me, the first light catching the rock, and then the silence. Not the silence of empty space, the silence of presence, like the mountain itself is holding its breath, and I feel something before I understand it. A shift, a kind of vertigo, as though the ground beneath me has tilted. Because I'm suddenly realizing something that should have been obvious. Table Mountain didn't know I was coming. It wasn't waiting for my grief. It wasn't there to give me an answer. It simply is massive, ancient, completely indifferent to my timetable. And standing there, suddenly very small, I had a thought that felt like a voice and a whisper and an earthquake all at once. You have been asking me to fit into your world, but I am the world. I am the space between the atoms. I am the gravity holding you to this rock. I was here before this mountain. I will be here after. And you, you beautiful, broken, temporary you, are seen, known, held by a God who paints with light and speaks in silence. I sat down, literally, and my legs gave out and I wept. Not because everything was fixed, not because I suddenly had answers, but because for the first time in months I remembered, I remembered that I was talking to someone infinite. Can I tell you what I think has happened to us? I think we've become victims of our own success, of our own access, of this incredible, terrible, miraculous thing called information. We know so much now. We can Google the answer to almost any question in seconds. We can watch a documentary about black holes while sitting on the toilet. We've mapped the human geonome. We've photographed the beginning of time. We have algorithms that can predict what we want before we even know we want it. And somewhere in all that knowing, we've lost our awe. We've turned the infinite into content. We've turned mystery into a meme. We've turned the creator of the cosmos into a life coach whose primary purpose is apparently helping us optimize our morning routines. And I'm not pointing fingers. I'm in this with you. I have a prayer list that looks like a project management spreadsheet. I have Bible verses categorized by a felt need, anxiety, career, relationships, self-esteem. As though God's word is a pharmacy and I'm simply picking up prescriptions. But here's what I'm learning, and maybe you're learning it too. When we reduce God to our size, we lose the only God who can actually help us. Because a small God can't handle big pain. A manageable God can't redeem impossible situations. A domesticated deity can't speak into the wild, terrifying, beautiful chaos of being alive. We need a bigger God. And I think somewhere deep down we know it. We feel it when we stand at the edge of the ocean, when we hold the newborn baby, when we look into the night sky and realize the light reaching our eyes began its journey before humans even existed. We feel it. We just forget to name it. I want to take you somewhere. Imagine a landscape stripped bare. No trees, no buildings, no distractions, just you and a whirlwind. This is Job, chapter 38. And after 37 chapters of human beings trying to explain God, trying to defend him, debate him, define him, God finally shows up. And he doesn't apologize. He doesn't offer a tidy explanation. He speaks from the whirlwind. Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know? Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set? Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy. Can you feel that? This isn't the God we've reduced to a comforting mascot. This is the ancient architect of existence, the one who, scripture tells us, measures the oceans in the hollow of his hand and weighs the mountains on scales. And God continues. And Job, Job who has lost everything, Job, who has sat in ashes and pain, Job, who has demanded answers. Job finally reaches a place where he can say, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Wait, don't miss this. Job isn't being given a spreadsheet explaining why everything happened. He's being right-sized, he's being reminded of the scale of reality. He's being overwhelmed by the sheer, terrifying, magnificent reality of who God is. And in that overwhelming, in being dwarfed, Job finds peace. Not because every question was answered, but because he encountered someone big enough to hold the questions. That's the God we're talking about today. Not a God who fits neatly into our categories, not a God who bends himself to the limits of our understanding. But a God who, as the prophet Isaiah says, is enthroned above the earth while its people appear like grasshoppers. A God who stretched out the heavens like a canopy, a God before whom the rulers of this world are nothing. Grasshoppers. That's us. And from the vantage point of eternity, this isn't an insult. It's a relief. We are small. Our problems are small. Our politics are small. Our timelines are small. But we are held by someone infinite. And here's the miracle that breaks my brain every time. That same God, the one who holds galaxies in his hands, knows my name. The psalmist says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know me when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. The infinite is intimate. The uncontainable is close. The God who needs nothing chooses relationship. He chose to know us, to pursue us, to meet us in our smallness with a love that cannot be measured. Okay. Practical moment. Because this is beautiful, but we still live in the real world. Laundry, deadlines, anxiety, bills, broken relationships. So how can we actually live with a big God in a world that constantly wants to make him small? First, practice humility. Cosmic humility. That sounds complicated, but it isn't. Once a day, just once, stop. Look up, look at the sky, look at the tree, look at your own hand and think about the impossible complexity of bone and nerve and blood beneath the skin. And say out loud, I don't understand a fraction of what's happening here. And that's okay. We're not meant to understand everything. We're meant to be awed by something. Secondly, expand your prayer vocabulary. If your prayers sound like grocery lists, try poetry. If they sound like business transactions, try silence. Read the psalms out loud, the real psalms, the ones with rage and wonder and fear and celebration and cosmic imagery. Let the spirit stretch. Give your soul room to breathe. And third, and this is the hard one, surrender to the outcome. A big God doesn't guarantee small problems, but he does promise his presence in the problems. Job's suffering didn't disappear when God showed up, but Job's perspective changed. He moved from God owes me an explanation to God is enough. So let me ask you, what would change if you really believe, not merely in your head, but deep in your bones, that the God who holds the universe also holds your story? Would you breathe differently? Would you love differently and more freely? Would you risk more boldly? Let me take you back to Table Mountain. It's fully light now. Cape Town is awake. The roads are beginning to full. The city is moving again. But I'm still up there, looking out across the Atlantic, watching the clouds drift around the mountain and the sunlight spread across the city below. And I'm thinking about scale, about how desperately we need it. We need to be reminded that we're small. Because when we're small, our problems become small. And we need to be reminded that we're held. Because when we're held, we can be safe even when everything around us is falling apart. This mountain has been here longer than any of us. Long before my problems, long before my plans, long before my need to understand everything. And I wonder if that's how God works in us, too. Not always in lightning bolts. Though sometimes, yes. Mostly, perhaps in the slow work of erosion, wearing down our pride, carving out space for wonder, making room in our cramped, controlled hearts for a God who refuses to be managed. I stand up, my legs are stiff, my face is cold and windburnt, and I look over Cape Town one more time. Then I whisper into the wind, because some prayers are too raw to say any other way. I'm sorry for making you so small. Teach me to be overwhelmed again. And the wind or God, or whatever you want to call it, seem to whisper back. I've been here the whole time. You just stopped looking up. I want to read something to you, and I want you to hear it. Really hear it, as though you've never heard it before. Not as a verse you memorized in Sunday school, not as a bumper sticker, but as a declaration against everything small, safe, controlled, and manageable in your life. Our sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. Nothing, not your diagnosis, not your divorce, not your debt, not your depression, not your doubt, not a thing you've never told anyone, not a fear that wakes you at three in the morning. Nothing is too hard for the one who spoke light into being. Nothing is too hard for the one who holds the ocean in his hands. Nothing is too hard for the one who looked at death. Actual death, the final enemy, the apparent end of hope, and said, I will take that, I will swallow that, I will turn that into a doorway. Do you see what this means? The God who is big enough to be terrifying is also big enough to be trusted. The God who is vast enough to be unknowable is also personal enough to be known. The God who spins galaxies also knows the smallest details of your life. And I don't know where you are right now. I don't know what valley you're walking through. I don't know what mountain is casting a shadow over your life. But I know this: you have not exhausted God's resources, you have not outsinned his grace, you have not outlasted his patience, you have not outgrown his love. The God who is bigger than the universe is still close enough to hold your heart, and is asking you, right now, to let him be big again. Let's land this plane. A small God makes us anxious, a big God makes us brave. That's the heart of this whole conversation. When God is small, when he's reduced to a set of rules, a political position, a cosmic vending machine, we have to manage him, control him, perform for him, and anxiety becomes inevitable. But when God is big, when he's uncontainable, unmanageable, awe-inspiring reality at the center of existence, we get to rest, we get to trust, we get to be brave. Because we're held by someone who cannot be shaken. So maybe the question isn't simply, do you believe in God? Maybe the deeper question is, how big is the God you believe in? And if your God has become too small, today is a good day to let Him become big again. I want to leave you with a challenge just for a week. When anxiety rises, when you feel that need to control everything, when that familiar voice says, It's all up to me, stop and say this out loud. God is bigger than this. When the news terrifies you, God is bigger than this. When the diagnosis overwhelms you, God is bigger than this. When the relationship breaks, God is bigger than this. When you don't have the answer, God is bigger than this. Let it become your breath, your anchor, a reminder that you are not carrying the universe on your shoulders. Because it's true, and the more you remember it, the more deeply you'll believe it, and the more deeply you believe it, the more free you will become. May you remember today and every day that the God who holds the universe is holding you. May you stop trying to squeeze the infinite into the limits of your understanding and instead make room for wonder. May you discover in your smallness a security that bigness can never provide, because you are seen, known, and loved by the one who spoke the stars into being and calls them by name. And may you never, ever, ever settle for a God who fits in your pocket. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode stirred something in you, if you felt that pullback towards wonder, would you share it? Send it to a friend who needs to remember that they're held. Leave a review, join the conversation, and until next time, keep going beyond belief. Grace and peace to you. God bless you.