The Lesson

Ever since I read this poem, it has stuck in my head and it seems to pop up every time I try to make a pocket-size God out of Jesus.

The Lesson by James Russell Lowell

I sat and watched the walls of night
With cracks of sudden lightning glow,
And listened while with clumsy might
The thunder wallowed to and fro.
The rain fell softly now; the squall,
That to a torrent drove the trees,
Had whirled beyond us to let fall
Its tumult on the whitening seas.
But still the lightning crinkled keen,
Or fluttered fitful from behind
The leaden drifts, then only seen,
That rumbled eastward on the wind.
Still as gloom followed after glare,
While bated breath the pine-trees drew,
Tiny Salmoneus of the air,
His mimic bolts the firefly threw.
He thought, no doubt, 'Those flashes grand,
That light for leagues the shuddering sky,
Are made, a fool could understand,
By some superior kind of fly.
'He's of our race's elder branch,
His family-arms the same as ours.
Both born the twy-forked flame to launch,
Of kindred, if unequal, powers.'
And is man wiser? Man who takes
His consciousness the law to be
Of all beyond his ken, and makes
God but a bigger kind of Me?

We seem to forget that we were made in the image of God, but God was not made in the image of us. He is bigger than that - much much much much much much much bigger! If you don't believe me, look at the full extent of the entire universe...oh wait...we haven't discovered the FULL extent of the entire universe. And we worship the Creator of this massive masterpiece. That never ceases to blow my mind. We are less than microscopic compared to God, and yet, we believe ourselves to be so big.

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" 
Psalms 8:3-4