16th June 2015

Tim Cope is an Australian adventurer who from 2004 to 2007 rode a horse from Mongolia to Hungary, in the trail of Genghis Khan. He lived to tell many tales, and one was of a conversation that happened in the middle of Kazakhstan. After revealing to one of the locals that there are thousands of horses roaming free in the middle of Australia, the man’s eyes lit up with the commercial possibilities of import and profit. Turning to Tim he asked, “The Indian Ocean, is it a shallow or deep lake?”

I think that God must smile when he hears his people ask theological questions of a similar nature. “Does God actually know what I’m going through?” “Is God able to help me in this difficult situation?” “Is the work of atonement of sufficient power to deal with my worst mistakes?” But maybe God does not smile, but looks on with wonder at our lack of respect and knowledge and trust, and longs for us to come to reality and to step away from our shallow theology.

‘As far as the East is from the West’, is one of the better calculations of divine mercy in describing the distance that God puts between us and our sins. ‘Neither the present nor the future’, is one of the better estimations of the things that are not able to weaken the commitment that God has for his people. ‘To him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine’, is one of the better reckonings of what God can do in response to our prayers. The Indian Ocean is not a shallow lake, and neither is the glory of our God.

DM 16^th June 2015