Over the years I've wanted lots of things from Santa. It has ranged from toys to gadgets to books. But two of the presents on my wish-list were brought back to mind by something John Piper spoke about, namely a telescope and a microscope. I've in the past wanted to be both an astronomer and a scientist. Thankfully I'm neither... But these two particular things can give some insight into what we were made for.
"...everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory , whom I formed and made." Isaiah 43:7
Glorifying God is a lot like magnifying God, and my two Christmas wish-list presents both magnify really well... but really differently. A microscope takes something really tiny, almost invisible to the human eye, and makes it a lot bigger than it really is. A telescope takes something impossibly huge, but to the naked eye seems small, and makes it more like the size it really is. The problem is that we can glorify, or magnify God in those two different ways. We can say, "Here is my God, He's tiny but I want to make him seem bigger to you", or we can say, " Here is my God, he's amazingly huge, but you can't see that, let me show you how big he really is.".
One is blasphemy, one is God-exalting.
I want a telescope for Christmas...
