I was amazed.  It started with the first peek over the rim.  The closer I got, the deeper it went, and the more the impression grew.  There is no way to feel like you’re some sort of big deal when you first encounter the Grand Canyon.  It is incomprehensibly enormous.  The statistics don’t do it justice.  I know it averages a mile deep, and ten miles across, and it is 278 miles long, east to west.  But it’s just not something you can wrap your head around quickly.  The colors are indescribable, and they change all day long, from sunrise to sunset.  The shapes in many places seem simply unreal.  The seemingly common creek that winds along its bottom is 300 feet wide on average!

What really iced it for me, though, is when I stood on one point and looked across to another one, where a number of people stood, awe-struck.  They were so TINY!  (You might be able to see them in the upper right corner of the picture.)  The ledge on top of which they stood was overwhelmingly huge!  There was only one way to describe my feelings.  I felt insignificant.

That ledge is almost 1,000 times my height!  And it is only a small part of the breath-taking panorama that I faced!  I could not imagine anything so big, not even the mountains that I enjoy at home.  I’m familiar with those “rolling green hills.”  The Grand Canyon is something else entirely.

King David’s words came to mind from Psalm 8.  “…what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (verse 4).  We are just miniscule specks on the surface of what is, compared to “the heavens,” a tiny mote of material flying through space.  Why would the Creator of all of this majesty care one whit about these insignificant, itty-bitty creatures?

Oh, but he does!  The Lord who made the magnificent heavens and whose creative energy formed this world cares about what would otherwise be of no import at all – us!  Every one of us, no matter who.

It seems almost everyone knows one particular verse from the Bible, and it begins with, “For God so loved the world…”  There it is, that great big, space-travelling ball on which we live.  God loves it.  But that’s not where it stops.  “…that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  No matter how small we are, we are not insignificant.  We are so important that God sacrificed his one and only son for us.  He only asks us to believe in him!

To emphasize how important – significant – we are to God, Jesus talks about our Lord’s care for even the birds and flowers, and how he cares for us much more (see Matthew 6:25-33).  He doesn’t just care about our existence, but about our well-being and our being able to focus on more than just what we eat and what we wear.  He wants us to notice the beautiful and amazing things in this world he created, and the most precious things in life, the greatest of which is his kingdom and his righteousness.  We can’t do that when we’re running around hungry and naked.

Let us be encouraged with this picture.  The next time we encounter something so big that we feel insignificant in comparison – a raging storm, terrible grief, a monstrous life problem, or even the Grand Canyon – let us thank the Creator God that we are not insignificant in his sight.  He will be with us throughout, and will carry us even to a home where there are no more tears or sorrow.  He loves each of us enough to sacrifice his one and only Son for us, no matter who we are, and whether or not we believe.  Now that’s amazing!