Immanence of God

Each morning Alexander Chu awakened to the smell of incense burning offered in front of Buddha statues. His home was like a temple. On each wall hung a Buddha portrait, totaling more than 30 deities throughout the house.

You might think the family lived on a street in Thailand or China yet his home was in Lawrence, Kansas. His father was a science professor with a Guggenheim Award, and his mother was a so-called “tiger mom” who kept the pressure on Andrew and his two sisters for straight A’s.

My Taiwanese family lineage includes generations of Buddhists, so religion was destined to be integral to my identity formation. Yet outside our home, our neighbors pursued an entirely different faith. Somehow, I managed to go through 18 years of life without ever hearing the Good News of Jesus.

In the mid-1990s, Andrew arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His dorm was full of fervent Christians. These InterVarsity Christian Fellowship students were the first Asian American Christians he had ever met. Andrew said, “Living with them, I began to realize that the Buddhism of my upbringing was not in my heart.”

Growing curious about Christianity during his sophomore year, Andrew asked a friend if he could join him at an IVCF gathering. There for the first time he heard God’s promises declared in worship songs and saw men and women praising him. He joined GIG (Groups Investigating God) and began studying the Gospel of John. Andrew said, “The authority with which Jesus spoke amazed me; it’s as if his words jumped off the pages, addressing me directly.”

Before I could place faith in Jesus, I needed to know there was a rational basis for Christianity’s foundational truths. I attended a retreat sponsored by InterVarsity, where I took an apologetics track. I heard well-founded explanations of the inspiration of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the uniqueness of the gospel. I found that Christianity was the most intellectually stimulating worldview I had ever encountered.

During my junior year I started reading John Stott’s pamphlet “Becoming a Christian.” While reading, I grew convinced of my sin and need to be forgiven. I knelt down committed my life to Christ. I had grown up in a sea of deities, yet never had a relationship with any of them. On that day, I experienced the living God, Emmanuel: “God is with us.” A peace overtook me. That night I became the first Christian in our family’s lineage.

For months he prayed about how to tell his parents what had happened. When he was at home for winter break, he sat in the living room to read Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents. His father was stunned by his reading choice, but also pleased by the dutiful title of the book. When he asked why Andrew was reading it, he told him that he had become a Christian. His parents insisted that the family religion was Buddhism. Both parents held out hope that he would come to his senses and return to the Buddhist faith.

As the years passed, I started to discern a call to vocational ministry. My parents said that if I followed through with this plan, they would cut me off. Sensing disunity in our home, I decided to stay and care for my father, who was battling heart disease. My presence and devotion built mutual respect and helped preserve our relationship. In God’s timing, my family softened to my hopes of becoming a pastor. My parents continue to share their Buddhist experiences with me, and I continue to share my faith with them. My mom regularly prays to Jesus to bless and protect me.

Editor’s note: Andrew now serves on staff as pastor of outreach at a multisite church in the Chicago suburbs.

Philip Yancey wrote in a blog on the seemingly infinite expanse of space and the smallness of our earth by comparison. The sheer scale is enough to make you dizzy, but Yancey stares at the sky and recalls the Book of Job—and Jesus. He writes:

Scientists now believe that if you had unlimited vision, you could hold a sewing needle at arm’s length toward the night sky and see 10,000 galaxies in the eye of the needle. Move it an inch to the left and you’d find 10,000 more. Same to the right, or no matter where else you moved it. There are approximately a trillion galaxies out there, each encompassing an average of 100 to 200 billion stars.

Job got a closeup lesson on how puny we humans are compared to the God of the universe, and it silenced all his doubts and complaints. I’ve never experienced anything like the travails Job endured. But whenever I have my own doubts, I try to remember that perspective — the Hubble telescope view of God.

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul quotes what many believe to be a hymn from the early church. In a … lyrical paragraph, Paul marvels that Jesus gave up all the glory of heaven to take on the form of a man — and not just a man, but a servant — one who voluntarily subjected himself to an ignominious death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-7)

I pause and wonder at the mystery of Incarnation. In an act of humility beyond comprehension, the God of a trillion galaxies chose to “con-descend” — to descend to be with — the benighted humans on this one rebellious planet, out of billions in the universe. I falter at analogies, but it is akin to a human becoming an ant, perhaps, or an amoeba, or even a bacterium. Yet according to Paul, that act of condescension proved to be a rescue mission that led to the healing of something broken in the universe. […]

We hear the roar of God at the end of the Book of Job, a voice that evokes awe and wonder more than intimacy and love. Yet Philippians 2 gives a different slant on the Hubble telescope view of God. A God beyond the limits of space and time has a boundless capacity of love for his creations, no matter how small or rebellious they might be.

The US has long ranked high among the world’s nations in its level of religious belief. But the Pew Research Center examined just what 80 percent of Americans actually mean when they say they “believe in God.”

Here’s what its survey of more than 4,700 adults found:

56% of Americans believe in God “as described in the Bible.”

97% God is all-loving

94% God is all-knowing

86% God is all-powerful

God determines what happens in my life…

43% All of the time

28% Most of the time

16% Some of the time

6% Hardly ever

6% Never

Talking with God…

56% I talk to God and God does not talk back

39% I talk to God and God talks back

Terry Wogan was a veteran BBC broadcaster on the Radio 2 breakfast show for nearly 40 years. When Wogan was asked how many listeners he had, he said, “Only one.” In reality, he had over nine million. But in Wogan’s mind, he wanted every listener to feel like he was speaking directly to them.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is like that. When you pray, you join with billions of other sometimes desperate and needy people--asking for his help. But he hears you as if you were the only one speaking. He speaks to you as if you were his only listener.

Within its first year, a dolphin develops a unique signature whistle which is the equivalent of its name; it uses this to identify itself to other dolphins. Adults are adept at copying the cries of other dolphins as if calling them by name. This is a fact backed up by a research study in Scotland which concluded that dolphins respond when another dolphin calls out their name.

An American research study concluded that dolphins recognize other dolphins even if they lost contact many years previously. One experiment proved that they could still remember each other’s whistle even after being apart for twenty years. Dolphins are socially complex mammals, and their social bonds with family and friends are very important.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible says that God knows each one of us by name … that we belong to him. We are each unique individuals in God’s sight.

When man fell in the Garden of Eden, he took nature down with him. In spite of this some of nature has retained its former glory, and many have seen God’s hand: “How many poets have claimed to observe him in a vermillion sunset or a blooming rose, in a bird’s song or a ripple on the surface of a stream?”

The famous American naturalist John Muir wrote in 1839 hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains: “Another inspiring morning, nothing better in any world can be conceived. No description of Heaven that I have ever heard or read of seems half so fine.”

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt visiting Yosemite wrote: “The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages.”

On the other hand, the fall and savagery of nature is all too apparent, as some observers have written, nature is also “full of danger and malice, chaos and murder, uncertainty and terror … We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. ... Masked beneath the beauty of nature’s world is one simple and ugly truth: life must take life in the interest of life itself …”

Hart Island is found a little way off the coast of Long Island. Nobody lives on Hart Island. It is the home, though, of a million bodies—bodies that have been buried there. It’s a place that’s known as a potter’s field. It’s a place meant for the homeless, the stillborn, poor immigrants, poets, and artists who died penniless. It’s a wasteland for the forgotten dead.

But its newest additions are those who have died from the coronavirus. (During the Covid-19 crisis they dug) … a mass grave on Hart Island. All of these bodies are placed in cheap, crate-like coffins, set side-by-side, as backhoes and men in hazmat suits cover them over with dirt. People dying without dignity, dying with disease, being buried, and being buried safely so as to contain the disease that still resides in their decaying skin.

On Hart Island, in the very middle of the island, there is a large, white cross, with black letters inscribed on the horizontal beam. Those letters read out this way: HE KNOWS US ALL BY NAME. The Risen Christ never forgets a name. He remembers. The stainless white cross that stands in the middle of Hart Island stands as the definitive public witness: He knows us all by name.

Since 1939, Stan Lee created or co-created some of the world’s most popular superheroes. His super-human imagination gave birth to Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, and Ant-Man, just to name a few.

Of course, the world has no shortage of storytellers, but Lee was something of a mutant in the field. The Avengers series alone has generated more than $10 billion in ticket sales at the box office since 2008. So, what set his stories apart from the rest? Lee was able to tap into deeply rooted human instincts.

He explains his secret in a 1984 interview with ET:

The whole formula … was to say: Let’s assume that somebody really could walk on walls like Spider-Man, or turn green and become a monster like The Hulk. That’s a given; we’ll accept that. But, accepting that, what would that person be like in the real world if he really existed? Wouldn’t he still have to worry about making a living? Or having acne and dandruff? Or his girlfriend jilting him? What are the real problems people would have? I think that’s what made the books popular.

We all know we need a superhero to rescue us from our enemies and from calamities. But we simultaneously want this hero to be someone with whom we can identify. There are two instincts woven into our fallen nature: the knowledge that we need someone to save us and the deep desire for another to understand our struggles. Lee was also well-known for his cameo appearances inside the stories he had written. Each film since X-Men in 2000 (until his death in 2018) has featured a brief incarnation of the author.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Stan Lee wasn’t the first to write himself into his storyline. Jesus did not simply rescue us from afar. He wrote himself into our story. He became a man and subjected himself to all the tyrannies of a fallen world.

New parents are having a tough time naming their offspring. For starters, the baby’s name has to be freely available on social media. Before the advent of social media, when it was time to name the baby, soon-to-be parents dug into their family history or cracked open a baby names book. Not anymore. Names are big business.

When a child is born parents formerly purchase the name as a domain so they’d always have it. That’s not good enough. Parents are now relying on available Snapchat, X, and Instagram handles to name their kids. The reason: Many parents want their kids to have a social media presence before they’re born. After birth, social media might help them in business.

For example, according to an article on Business Insider, “The highest-earning YouTube star in the world is an elementary-school kid who makes millions reviewing toys. Ryan, the 7-year-old ‘host’ of Ryan Toys Review, a popular toy-review channel on YouTube, jumped from No. 8 to No. 1 on Forbes' annual list of YouTube stars who are making the most money.”

Possible Preaching Angle: Choosing a child’s name is also important in Scripture. At times God chose and announced the name of the baby before birth (Isaac - Gen. 17:19; Cyrus – Isa. 44:28; John the Baptist – Luke 1:13; Jesus – Matt. 1:21). Scripture also assures us that God our Father know us by name and that we are unique in his sight (John 10:3).

Brett Baddorf, a missionary to the South Pole (yes, he lives and works at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station), has surprisingly discovered God’s incredible beauty in this remote place. Baddorf writes:

My best moments during the winter here … are spent walking outside where isolation and darkness meet. I pause to reflect on God’s vast infiniteness, gazing at a crystal-clear view of the Milky Way and at constellations invisible back home. Stepping outside into 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit with an average 30-degree wind chill is daunting, but every moment in the wild I feel God’s overwhelming presence as I’m made aware of his transcendence.

I enjoy learning about the sciences that explore the vastness of space. But the more I learn, the more I see the intricate hand of God weaving the tapestry of the sky. One person on the station told me it was absurd amid all of this infinite wonder to believe in a God who would be bothered with such an inconsequential planet, let alone the people on it. Gazing into the unbridled magnificence of our galaxy, however, I felt anything but irrelevant to God. Quite the opposite. I felt God’s tender grasp.

The most unique of my outdoor experiences at the South Pole has been standing beneath the Aurora Australis. Even with a scientific understanding of what causes this phenomenon, it is easy to stand in awe of a Creator who moves beyond simple function and into indescribable beauty—it is entirely possible God is doing both at the same time. Watching as wild green curtains dance above a barren and inhospitable landscape, one cannot help but wonder if God reserves some of the more marvelous masterpieces for the few who strive to the furthest corners of this world.

Located in the southwestern region of the United States is a tourist attraction that draws thousands of visitors every year. It is a six-hour drive from the nearest airport and 33 miles from the nearest town. It claims no majestic rock formations or redwoods. Resting in unremarkable landscape, its focal point is nothing more than a small brass disc, roughly three inches in diameter—a government survey marker designating the point at which four different state boundaries meet: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Tourists pose for photographs on all fours—feet in two states, hands in two more—faces beaming with delight of being able to boast that they are in four places at once.

But the tourist fascination with The Four Corners Monument reveals something about us human beings: we cannot be in more than one place at one time. We can move from one place to the next, but we cannot occupy two places simultaneously. Yet God, who is spirit, is able to be everywhere fully present. God, unbound by a body, is not limited to one place. He is not merely big, he is uncontainable, able to be present everywhere.

Google StreetView, the virtual tool that allows users to view eye-level images of a location defined on Google Maps, extends to cover many parts of the world that are accessible by car. However, the Faroe Islands (an autonomous island country within the Kingdom of Denmark) noted over a year ago that their beloved island had not yet been indexed by Google's tracking, and submitted a unique request.

Led by resident Durita Dahl Andreassen, they proposed a Google "Sheep View" in which 360° cameras would be strapped to the backs of roaming sheep who would then provide the world with images spanning the remote beauty of the island nation. Upon receiving the proposal, Google reportedly responded that the idea was "shear brilliance" and supplied the island with the necessary equipment.

The project was completed, and Google Maps Program Manager reflected on its success saying, "It's our mission to make the farthest corners of the world accessible through Street View in the palm of your hand. But there's a lot of world out there, so sometimes we need a little bit of help to hoof the distance. Now, thanks to Durita and her trusty sheep, you can explore the Faroe Islands in Google Maps. It goes to show—if there's a wool, there's a way."

Potential Preaching Angles: Regardless of whether sheep were actually present at the birth of Christ (as most popular nativity scenes would lead us to believe), the Bible tells us clearly that the Messiah was born in a small, insignificant part of the world that really had yet to be "put on the map." And yet, those who were present when and where Jesus entered into to the world-whether poor shepherds or wealthy magi-would be the ones whose accounts would eventually bring the rest of the world good tidings of great joy.

On a YouTube video, astronomer Dr. Peter Edwards explains the majesty of the universe:

You will never, ever, get your head around how big the universe is. It is just enormous. There is no way, I think, that the human mind can comprehend the true immensity of the universe. We are happy with the size of an elephant, or the size of a tree, or maybe even the size of (a) cathedral. But if we go beyond that our brains just start to run out of gas.

We pointed the Hubble telescope at what…appeared to be a very ordinary patch of the night sky. If you imagine holding up your finger with a grain of sand on it and looking at the patch of sky that grain of sand blocks out, that's the field that the (Hubble) telescope zoomed in to.

What the telescope saw was incredible. There are 10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. If this tiny patch of sky is like every other, then we can calculate how many galaxies are out there.

The visible universe contains around 100 billion galaxies. Each one of those galaxies contains around about 100 billion stars. That means the visible universe contains something like 10,000 million million million stars. That means there are more stars in the visible universe than there are grains of sand on the earth.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) God, power of - The universe is immense but God created it all just by speaking a word. 2) Human Worth (Psalm 8) - Our earth and its population is just a tiny remote speck in a vast universe but God loves us; 3) God, imminence of - God knows each one of us by name (John 10:3), he knows the number of hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30), and he knows our words and deeds before we even act (Psalm 139). 4) Advent - God sent His Son to bridge the immense gap to bring us to himself.

The following Buddhist poem, in the form of a "waka," was written in the 12th century by Saigyo Hoshi after he visited a Shinto Grand Temple:

Gods here?
Who can know?
Not I.
Yet I sigh
and tears flow
tear on tear.

Editor's Note: Note the author's honest longing for true knowledge of God. He yearns to experience God and God's presence but he can't know for sure. According to the New Testament, God has revealed himself in the presence and person of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we can know that God is with us.

According to the authors of the book America's Four Gods, Americans differ widely from one another on two key areas of belief about God: (1) the level of God's engagement in our world, and (2) the extent of God's judgment of evildoers.

In other words, is God actively and meticulously engaged in what happens in your life and in your world? Or is he distant, remote, uncaring? And secondly, does God judge wrongdoers in this life? Does God express wrath toward people and nations in this age? Or is God only kind, forgiving, and helpful to people in need?

Based on those two differences, the authors say that Americans divide into four major understandings of God.

First is the Authoritative God. The Authoritative God is very involved in the world to help people and does judge evildoers in this life. Even so, he is loving, and is seen as a Father figure. The author's research shows that 31 percent of Americans have this understanding of God.

Second is the Benevolent God. The Benevolent God is very involved in this world to help people but does not feel anger toward evildoers and does not judge anyone. Twenty-four percent of Americans have this understanding of God.

Third is the Critical God. The Critical God does not involve himself in the affairs of this world or its people, but he does take careful note of how people live and will judge them in the afterlife, holding them to account for evils done. Sixteen percent of Americans have this understanding of God.

Fourth is the Distant God. The Distant God is more a cosmic force or Higher Power than a person. This God created everything but is no longer engaged with the world and does not judge its inhabitants. Twenty-four percent of Americans have this understanding of God.

Five percent of Americans are atheists.

Concerning agnostics, the authors write: "We find that when pressed, individuals who first describe themselves as 'agnostic' are actually believers in a Distant God. For the most part, agnosticism is a reaction to conventional images of God that strike the believer as mistaken."

After describing these four beliefs about God, the authors explore at length how our beliefs about God affect our beliefs and values about morality, society, science, money and possessions, evil, warfare, and the culture wars.

In Greek literature, Virgil wrote about the plight of humanity and how something new needed to be done to help man out of his predicament. In Greek thought, God was removed, a mere spectator, like someone observing a play in an amphitheater or a stadium--sometimes interfering in a helpful way, sometimes interfering in ways that were harmful.

There have been all kinds of weird notions about God expressed in the writings of humankind. Shakespeare, for example in King Lear, gave expression to some of this kind of thinking when he cried out, As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.

It is the Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth fully disclosed God--who he was and what he was and what motivated him. That disclosure reveals itself in love. And further we believe that this loving God has a desire to have fellowship with you and me. He not only wants to know us, he wants us to know him. Karl Barth, a most profound theologian of our century, put it this way: Either Jesus Christ was actually God, or he was not, or we do not have a full revelation of God yet.

God is over all things, under all things, outside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within filling.

An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds. And were it not for a God who loves to hook an "extra" on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed. The sheep would have been forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.

But God dances amidst the common. And that night he did a waltz.

The black sky exploded with brightness. ... Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an alien.

The night was ordinary no more.

The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed. God comes into the common for the same reason.

In order that we finite beings may apprehend the Emperor He translates His glory into multiple forms--into stars, woods, waters, beasts, and the bodies of men.

Philip Crosby, in his book March Till They Die, tells of a forced march of American and European soldiers in Korea. In November of 1950, the North Koreans were being pushed north, and they were taking with them the Americans and Europeans they had captured as prisoners of war. It was a terrible march. They were forced to go sometimes twenty miles a day though they were emaciated, hungry, suffering. Soldiers who couldn't keep up would fall back, and shots rang out. They had been executed.

Philip Crosby and his friends, as they passed close to those GI's who were having a hard time keeping up, would say slowly in a whisper, so as not to be heard, "God is near us in this dark hour. His love is real. His mercy is real. His forgiveness is real. His reward is waiting for us."