Daily Worship

The Master of Measure

Neil MacLennan January 10, 2024 4 5
day_4_gravitational_lensing_nasa_goddard
Image credit: NASA Goddard
Listen to this daily worship

Job 38: 31-33 (NRSVA)

31 ‘Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades,
    or loose the cords of Orion?
32 Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
    or can you guide the Bear with its children?
33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
    Can you establish their rule on the earth?

The clock on your mantelpiece and the measuring tape in the drawer may seem like unrelated objects, but in the vastness of the universe *Time* and *Space* enjoy a weird and mostly incomprehensible relationship especially when combined with their best pal: *Mass*.

Lines are no longer straight, time is not constant and mass is, er, forever throwing its weight around.

In fact — for me at least — it is this *fluidity* of what we typically regard as ‘solid and stable’ that gives me the slightest hint of how God is God. We can look at a flat map to see — and interpret — the landscape around us. Does God look at the Universe in a single glance, and see all of space and all of time at once? And with that thought, my mind explodes.

 

Prayer:

 

Eternal God

From whatever “the beginning means” you were are there. From whatever “the end means” you will be are there.

For right here, right now, you are there.

We praise you!

 

Eternal God

Help us to be content with our lot. Stop us from being concerned with too much, too little, too long, too short, too fat, too thin. Instead we realise that you provide ‘just enough’ because you are the master of measure.

We praise you!

 

Eternal God

It does not matter that we cannot grasp the enormity of your presence. It does not matter about the beginning of things; nor its end. And for such a time as time even matters we undertake to live the life you give us to the full.

We praise you!

 

Amen.