thoughts on a verse

in

What does it mean to stretch out the heavens?

Is it like pulling taffy, or rolling dough?

Is it the unrolling of canvas to stretch over a frame, or pulling stockings over feet until the shrunken opaqueness conforms translucently to the leg?

Was there a concentration of dark substance thinned and stretched to reveal the image, unseen until time and space interrupted its pixels?

Is painting not a spreading or pulling of concentrated pigment across a surface until the soul’s expression is revealed?

But the one who stretches also condenses, for the Word became flesh and lived among us. Not the transference of divine energy into a vessel unable to contain its glory, but the concentrated essence of love, clothed in mortality, with one intent; to offer up its flesh, suffer and be killed, rather than let love’s object —us—bear the consequences of our own trespasses.

What does it mean to lay the foundation of the earth?

Is foundation the crust upon which we walk, mortal inhabitants who imagine ourselves creators and gods?

The product of erosion by nature and man, from which we rake and pillage substances we deem valuable, and upon which we deposit blood, sweat, and waste? Dispersed by air, dissolved by water; this solid matter has existed far longer than we. Yet we claim to own the dust to which we will all return. But we did not lay it.

Is the foundation of the earth its core, hidden deep within the strata and substrata? The molten nucleus wrapped by protective layers until we can live and move and have our being without suffering destruction.

Is the foundation of the earth not the building blocks from which we all derive our substance? The carbon and the nitrogen? The hydrogen and iron?

Who ordered these in such a way as to allow life, thought, art, and love, to thrive within their expressions? These elements exist on other spheres and yet there we hear no baby’s cry. No lover’s caress. No pang of grief and loss.

The heavens are a vast thing to stretch into existence, its foundations comprised of particles invisible to our eye. The incomprehensibly large and the infinitesimally small, both designed by the One. But this bit of scripture also declares that you are the LORD who forms the human spirit within a person.

The most elusive aspect of our being, which scientists cannot measure, but accounts for what we most value, is also formed by You.

This knowledge is so full of wonder, my mind cannot grasp it.

 

*Zechariah 12:1