God: 4D and Beyond

A few fascinating things about God that always blow my mind.  The youngest and I were discussing these some the other day during math, when the topic of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects came up. 

A two-dimensional world would be completely flat.  And a person who had only ever existed in a two-dimensional world would have a very difficult time even conceiving of a three-dimensional world.  I remember hearing the Trinity described thus: if a three-dimensional being put three fingers down into a two-dimensional world, the two-dimensional creatures would perceive of that being as three separate entities and, again, have a very difficult time conceiving how they could ever be one being.

Our world, however, is beyond 3-D.  We exist also in the fourth dimension: time.  In fact, I heard scientist Hugh Ross speak once about how scientist have identified some 10 or 11 dimensions.  That blows my unscientific mind all to pieces.  And realizing that God is beyond ALL of those dimensions, because he created them . . . well, my shattered mind is re-blown.

But just getting back to the 4th dimension of time.  God exists beyond our conception of time.  He is not limited by time the way we are.  Someone described it to me once that when God looks at me, he doesn't see me in one moment, the way any other human being does.  When God looks at me, he sees the entire span of my life in that one glance.  The whole of it.  He can still deal with me in the moment -- just like I can deal with the stain on one surface of the three-dimensional object I am cleaning, but I never lose the ability to "see" that object in all three of its dimensions. 

This means, folks, that when God looks at me, he sees not only all of my past but all of my future in one sweep.  This means that all decisions he makes in regards to me -- people to bring into my life, tragedies to allow or to prevent -- are all made in terms of the entirety of my earthly existence, not this one moment. 

This means that, that morning when I was 41 weeks miserably pregnant with my eldest and struggled to get on my knees in tears and prayed, God, this is it.  I can't run my life.  I don't know enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm a complete failure at it.  Take me, please.  I put my life in your hands.  I desperately need you to be not just my Savior, but my Lord.  . . . he saw my broken self in that moment, but he also saw the entirely of my life in that moment.  He saw the rotten friend I was growing up.  He saw the selfish wife I had been.  But he also saw the selfish wife I was going to continue to be.  He saw the lousy mom I was going to become.  He saw the depressions I was going to plunge into, the ugly sins I would indulge in . . . he saw the period of my life when I would completely back away from that commitment and shake my fist in fury at Him, blaming him for everything.  He saw the ugliness in my heart that I had yet to see -- and ugliness I have yet to see now.  He saw the rotten moments still to come in my life that I shudder to think of.

He saw it all, in one sweep.  And he said, "Yep, I love her.  I love her enough to die for her."  I didn't have to clean myself up, become good enough to deserve it.  "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 

It's all almost beyond conceiving.