In my office, I have two desks. When I am actually in my office, I work at one. The other desk collects things some of which I put there and others, like the occasional tiny spider, die there. This week I slid one of the piles across that back, less used desk and a tiny, wispy, not-actually-dead thing skittered away. “Mmmm, he’s alive.” Squinting for a closer look, I thought, “It’s a small spider.” I don’t get edgy from things like that (roaches, definitely edgy, but not wispy, tiny spiders) so I turned around and went about whatever else I was doing.
Power immeasurable because it is power invisible
As it has turned out that tiny spider skittered into my thoughts to the point where it became the introduction to this lesson. What made it decide to stop running? Was it reflex? Was it thinking about how powerful I was? What if I would have smashed it? Could it have cared? I wrote this about 18 hours after the spider made its run. Was it alive or dead? While I didn’t know the answer to that I can assure you the spider continued to have no clue of how I was thinking and thinking about it.
In spider terms my power is immeasurable. It cannot perceive it, prepare for it, fight back against it, or thank me for not smashing it.
Let’s pick another bug: the fire ant. Is it any smarter than its 8-legged counterpart? Can it sting? Yep. Will that hurt? Yep. Will I swell up if it bites me? No. My wife will, but even so, it will be very transient.
The spider runs. The ant stops and stings. Both are merely programmed responses to things immeasurably above them. The power I exercise over them is different and very, very large.
Let us now make a great leap from small things with many legs to larger things with two. On that first Easter morning, a squad of two-legged Roman guards stood duty outside Christ’s tomb. Roman duty around Jerusalem during Passover would never have been easy. The addition of Jesus to that mix only inflamed the situation. Here they were posted by the grave since the dead man had made some comment about not staying dead. How would that look? We don’t know what their thoughts were, but their programmed response when the angels arrived was to fall down and become like dead men.
There was no preparing for the angelic arrival. The soldiers would not have known what risk they faced (other than execution if things went awry). The angels were immeasurably above, different than the guards and yet aware of those men’s fears, thoughts, how to keep them from running. The angels could speak the guard’s power language as they were as far above the Roman’s as I was above the spider.
God’s words to Lucifer in the Garden came to mind. “You will strike his heal. He will crush your head.” Satan coming against the power of God was like an ant biting me on the heal: small. Probably he was also blinded by his foolishness thinking his power was more than ant-like.
When a person denies God or raises their fist at him it is only ant-like, or tiny-spider-like in terms of the power difference. God has given people enough brains to acknowledge him. Denying him may feel empowering to some, but it is ill-advised. A submariner does not turn off its navigational aids and call for max speed. People do. The results are not unexpected.
The power is immeasurable because it is invisible. While such martial power of the angels over the Roman’s or me over the spider comes easily to mind, there is more to it. Domination is not God’s first mode.
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