Jeremiah 23:23-24 "Am I only a God nearby," declares YHWH, "and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares YHWH. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares YHWH.
The very first time I read that, many years ago, I did a double-take and went back, certain that that my eyes had failed me: "Surely God would say that He isn't far but very close?" The second reading confirmed that I was wrong; God was saying exactly what I thought He couldn't be saying.
We naturally expect (dare I say, insist) that God would make the opposite point, in the audience-affirming, warm-fuzzy way we've been conditioned to anticipate from pulpits and Christian bookstore best-seller racks: "I'm not far from you but very close." It seems that this is what our self-esteem-hungry age wants reinforced over and over again: God lives to be near us.
I don't mean to sound cynical. Absolutely, the Lord does promise, repeatedly, His intimate care and knowledge of our lives personally.
Yet here the superficially opposite and equally vital truth is declared through the prophet: "He isn't merely local; He is incalculably distant!"
Distant and all-pervading.
God is infinitely more than our hired life-coach, or a psychologist who doesn't know about the stuff we prefer to omit during our session on the couch.
He is not that close that He doesn't always see the big picture. Unlike the gods of Damascus or Babylon, blind statues housed in pathetic shrines, the living God, "I AM," ceaselessly entertains the entire prospect of His Creation (and beyond; the Creation itself isn't, after all, "the fullness").
We are, yes, a precious part of His endless prospect, but His impenetrable prospect and design (as impenetrable as the holy glory of the Trinity) surpass every time, place, point, motion, relation, appearance and consequence that He calls into being and sweeps up into His supernal will.
We are precious for being a part of that prospect; the prospect isn't precious for our being a part (though, in a way, it is that, too, but that must be carefully and soberly contemplated). There can be no value that isn't derived from God and isn't a gift. He is the only Soloist; the song is His. And in that there is freedom and joy, and the vibrant vitality of communion with the God we have not created.
Man creates only local gods. Yahweh—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—urgently exhorts His people to remember Who created them.
