When my five-year-old asked how big God was, I launched into some Sunday School verbage about God’s hugeness. Vast, I believe, was the actual word I used to quantify God’s size. I referenced “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands” as proof of my claims of how big God was. Or, at least how big his hands are. I pointed to God declaring this world good. “Must be pretty big to be able to see the whole universe and nod your head at it,” I said.

But somewhere along my “God is HUGE!” talk — I believe it was around the part where my son started demanding specific dimensions — I stopped. And I realized how wrong I was. Or, actually, how incomplete I was.

Of course, we love and we serve a big God. A God who’s big enough to hold the whole world, big enough to create and rule the universe, big enough to shoulder all our worries, big enough to know all, big enough to be all and be everywhere.

But yet, somehow, when it comes to God, it’s not his vastness that usually impresses me. It’s not usually his immeasurable hugeness that leaves me weak-kneed, woozy in awe of him. It’s his smallness that does that.

It’s the smallness of the God of the Universe who reveals himself in the random warm wind clicking my wood blinds on a late October afternoon. It’s the smallness of the One who once hovered over the waters and now hovers in me. It’s the smallness of the Creator of the World, the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Lord who offers a hand to hold mine, a set of arms to hold me. It’s the smallness of a God who whispers his promises, who calls my name and doesn’t deafen me in doing so.

It’s the smallness of a God who can pick me up from the ash heaps of life, dust me off, polish me up and leave me shinier than when he found me. It’s the smallness of a God who’s fingers can both break and bind up my heart, who can hold and stretch and mold my soul, who can sand down my rough edges without breaking me completely.

It’s the smallness of a God who is with me — always — and yet who is somehow big enough to be with all of us — always — at once. This paradox gets me every time.

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Image credit: flickr.com/photos/billmilesphotography