The created world tells us a lot about God.
I was out in my backyard yesterday and saw a sight I have seen many times – a bird sitting on a powerline. Now it wasn’t just any old powerline, it was a 33kv powerline (stronger than the ones you normally see in the burbs). I asked myself the question many of us have probably asked upon seeing such a sight: ‘How is that bird, so close to that dangerous power, not getting hurt? It is so small it could be fried in an instant’.
Now, most of us know the answer – it isn’t earthed (there isn’t a pathway for the electricity to travel through). Or, to put it another way, the bird is only close to the powerline and isn’t close (in the same way) to anything else… so it is safe. But watch out if that bird got close to the powerlines and something else at the same time – it would get cooked!
Humanity’s relationship with God is like that.
God has always been on a different level to us. He is immensely powerful, and, if not related to properly, lethal. But God is not a threat to humanity when it stays close to Him – exclusively. God’s power only becomes a threat when people are close to Him and love other things more than Him at the same time. This is called sin. We can’t get away from being close to God. We are His creation, living in His world. His power and size are inescapable, and become lethal to us when we (against His design) are close to and love something other than Him.
Enter Easter.
Easter is where God himself, in the person of Jesus, reached down to restore us to exclusive closeness to God. And it killed Him. In reaching down, touching us, and pulling us back into a close relational connection to God, Jesus was killed. God’s power was lethal for Him.
The good news is Jesus’ death gets us back into the presence of God without it killing us. And you never get used to that. Even when the bird is in harmony with the powerline it does well to remember what it is in the presence of. That’s why the Psalmist says,
‘With you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.’ Psalm 130:4
Jesus’s death doesn’t make you careless regarding the presence of God, He just makes you safe in the midst of it.