I’m Glad I Can’t Hold the Ocean

Have you ever tried to fit some of the ocean into your hand?

How about all of it?

Can you measure the sky in miles?

Can you weigh the Rocky Mountains?

Could you even put the Ozark hills on a scale?

Do you tell God’s Spirit where to go or what to do?

Does God consult you before he acts?

Have you taught him anything?

No?

Me neither.

Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust… All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness (Is. 40:15, 17).

The title of Isaiah 40 is Comfort for God’s People.

“Do you see the ocean, the skies, the mountains, the nations rising against you?” God asks. “They’re nothing to me.”

Nothing on earth moves or flows or grows at our command. We can’t even measure most things. I stand under the night sky because I see flaming suns as pinpricks and it makes me feel like a grasshopper (Is. 40:22).

And it comforts me.

When the world is overwhelming, I want to feel small in the palm of a big God. I want to know that while I could never hold the ocean, God can. And he holds me, too.

He will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom… (Is. 40:11)

Behold, our God (Is. 40:9).