Indescribable

"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?" - Isaiah 40:12

When I woke up this morning I had not planned on spending much of my day following Hurricane Ike's trek through The Gulf. But that is precisely what I have done. So in the midst of cleaning my apartment and running errands (I really live large on staycation), I have been glued to the TV. Partially because I think that the on-location reporters are absolutely ridiculous so it's a form of cheap entertainment, but mostly because I'm a little bit intrigued with weather systems. Uh-oh, my invisible pocket protector is showing again. Y'all...this storm is big. The picture of Ike above was taken from the International Space Station. The last time I checked, the International Space Station was in...Space. The satellite image puts it into a little better perspective for me: According to the news (and it is always completely accurate, right?), this storm is 70% bigger than normal hurricanes and is basically the size of Texas. Speaking of, apparently Ike didn't get the "Don't Mess With Texas" memo because he's definitely messing with Texas...

And to think that these pictures were all taken today before the storm even made landfall. I believe that is not supposed to happen until around midnight or so central time. I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone in the direct path of this storm would ignore evacuation orders, but inevitably some folks always stay put to ride it out. And they are even able to maintain their senses of humor...In case you can't read the message it says "Go away Ike, Tina Ain't Here"Tonight I was listening to a news report and there was a man on the phone who has kept his family in Galveston because they did not want to leave their pets. And he sounded pretty terrified on the phone at that point. It's not my place to question this man's judgment, but my heart became so heavy for these people who are now stuck in this storm. Especially the children. How scary for them because they had no choice in the matter. How sad for these parents who may have to live with some pretty big implications of their decision to stay.But I cannot watch all of this without thinking about the bigness (Is that a word? It is now.) of God. This storm is huge, but it is nothing compared to Him. This reality is honestly much bigger than this little mind of mine can fully grasp. And I know this might sound really weird to some of you, but in natural disasters such as this the realness (look, another new word) of God is much more apparent to me than it is at other times. I'm having trouble putting into words what I'm trying to say...so I'll just keep rambling. While great destruction will undoubtedly come as a result of this hurricane and it makes me sad to think about that, there are also going to be those miracle stories with no logical explanation to them. That's God revealing himself, I believe.

In thinking about all of this today, I remembered a message series by Louie Giglio called Indescribable. It's a two-part series and it's absolutely incredible because he goes into how big God and His universe is and how small we are in comparison. He also does a series about how though we are only small little bits in God's universe we are fearfully and wonderfully made small little bits. I can't find an easy link to the series, but here is one of my favorite parts of this talk. If you want the actual series, let me know and I can get it to you.

(BTW...All of these photes were pictures from the Associated Press. Yes, I should've credited the photographers, but I promise not to be a pirate and sell them or make copies of them at Wal-Mart or anything else illegal.)