Bruce Almighty

Tonight as I was washing my face, my mind wandered to the movie Bruce Almighty. Bruce Almighty is about a guy (Bruce) who challenges God, claiming that he can do God's job better than God can. God accepts his challenge, and gives his power to Bruce. It's meant to be a comedy... of course a man can't do God's job. And it certainly does have it's funny moments. But the part I was thinking about was Bruce's inability to deal with all of the prayers that he gets as God. God tells him he only gave Bruce a small amount of people who pray to him, but the amount of prayers he gets is overwhelming, and surprising at first because he hears them all in his head. He tries to solve his problem with Post-Its, and then file cabinets, and then finally settles on a prayer-email method. He sits down with his cup of coffee and starts to answer prayers, thinking he is making a dent, but the prayers pile up much faster than he can answer them. So, rather than slaving away and trying to give a just answer to every single prayer, he chooses an easy way out: "Yes to all." Obviously that's not how God answers prayers, and that's another topic completely concerning God's discernment in matters that we just cannot understand sometimes. I was pondering more Bruce's inability to keep up with the prayers, thanking God himself that he is not at all like that. The Bible declares (well, David to be specific) that God is quite the opposite: "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand." (Psalm 139:17-18, NIV). First of all, God thinks of us, ALL the time. And not just me. You too. At the same time he is thinking about me and all the other seven billion people on this planet. But he can do that, because he's God and that's not too much for him. In fact, I think he delights in it. It's not just something he does because, well, here I am, and if he takes his mind off me who knows what I will get myself into. No, it's more like, "Wow I love her so much that I can't help but think about her constantly." That's amazing. And it's much more than any human (even Bruce) could do.

Second, the verse above talks about God's thoughts about us outnumbering the grains of sand. I live in a desert, so I know a thing or two about sand. It's not big. Grains of sand are tiny, and they get everywhere. A desert is sand. I couldn't even begin to imagine how much sand is in just the valley that I live in. And there are other deserts in the world. The Mojave Desert is certainly not the only desert. And there are beaches. And mountains. Sand is everywhere on the planet, even on the bottom of the ocean. David isn't very specific when he talks about sand in this verse, but even if he only meant the sand in the Mojave Desert, that's still way too much for me to fathom. Imagine, a God whose every thought (about you) outnumbers all of the sand on the PLANET. That's a lot of love right there. But you know what? He's God. He's omnipotent. He can do it. And he does. So be blessed tonight, knowing that God's loving thoughts towards you number far and above anything you can imagine. :)

Grace and Peace!
Suzannah