On Vastness

Yesterday i delved into Isaiah 40... i’m picking it up again now.

Verses 6-8:
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of out God stands forever."

Isaiah compares us to grass... here in New England, grass stays green for about 2-4 months, and then turns brown and nasty. Unless you have Zoysia Grass. But that’s another story, for another day.
Grass is an excellent example of feebleness.
It grows a couple inches long, and then you cut it down with the lawnmower... and it doesn’t take a lawnmower to cut grass. You can pick it with your fingers, you can eat it, you can rub it in with your foot... them green stalks don’t stand a chance. Grass is so weak that it blows over in a gentle breeze.

And that grass is us.
All of our "glory"... our accomplishments, dreams, aspirations...
All of our corporations, the great pyramids, the Eiffel Tower; its all likened to flowers.
Flowers fall apart and turn brown and smelly and nasty a few weeks after they bloom.
All it takes is a little energy and its all gone.

The point here is to try to show us just how small and insignificant we are.

Have you ever sat back and thought about infinity?
It’s pretty difficult.
Like, think of the number 10. Pretty ordinary. Pretty small.
Compared to infinity, it’s nothing.
If you multiply 10 times itself 100 times, you get the number one googol.
That’s a 1 with 100 zeros at the end:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The "official" name for the number is ten duotrigintillion.
It’s impossible to count to a googol.
don’t try.
Check it out though.
Googol was 10 raised to the 100th power.
Theres an even bigger number (duh)...
A Googolplex is 10 raised to the googolth power.
That is, multiply 10 times 10, one googol times.

You know how a googol has 100 zeros?
Well, since a googol is more than the number of particles in the known universe, it is actually impossible to represent a googolplex in decimal form.
Wikipedia has more information on the relative scale of a googolplex... trust me, it’s impossible to imagine.
That said, remember how much bigger infinity is than the number 10?
You could say that infinity is infinitely bigger than 10.

That said, infinity is also infinitely bigger than one googol.
And it’s still just as much infinitely bigger than one googolplex.

Get it... its like swimming in an endless pool. You can’t ever get closer to infinity, no matter how high you count.

That’s exactly the scale that God is to us, on earth.
We’re grass... God is the vastness of the universe. You can’t even comprehend it.

Isaiah continues on like poetry, in verses 12-20...
"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?
Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor?
Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
Lebanon [as in, the whole country] is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings.
Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.
To whom, then will you compare God?
What image will you compare him to?
As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.
A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot.
He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple."

It keeps going... but the jist of it is that God is unfathomable.
Our minds simply aren’t capable of grasping the vastness, the perfectness, the extent of God.
It’s incredible.
We’re not even a drop in the bucket; not even a sodium ion in the ocean.