The Big Picture

“I think I’ve made you too small,” or so goes a lyric from an Addison Road song. I have to admit: I downloaded their album on a whim fueled by my brother’s advice and the fact that I liked their song “Hope Now,” which was all over Christian radio at the time.

But when I sat down to listen (I always listen to a new album in its entirety when I buy it), “Hope Now” wasn’t the song that gave me pause. It was “What Do I Know of Holy?,” the song I quoted earlier. That song felt like it was my own thoughts set to music. What did I know of holiness? Had I made a box for God and tried to fit Him into it? Had I so focused on my concept of who God was and what He was doing that I’d missed out on the bigness of His plan?

That’s something I’ve thought a lot about these last few weeks—how big God is and how vast His plans for us really are. We like to pick and choose from among God’s characteristics and paint a portrait that makes Him more understandable to us. God is love. God is patient. Jesus longs to be our Shepherd. God never leaves us. God has plans for us. All of those things are true, but God is also so much more. All of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior and Lord are absolutely thankful for His salvation, but sometimes we simply see it as a personal thing and miss out on the “bigness” of that gift—how God’s salvation changes us and the people that gift calls us to be.

This month, we at ec want you to see God for who He is and recognize the immenseness of His redemption. This Easter, as you ponder Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, we want you to know that Jesus’ sacrifice was always part of God’s plan, as Jennifer Denning so eloquently explains in her cover article on page 26. We want you to understand how God’s overwhelming love transforms us and calls us to a different way of life, something you’ll see in Brandy Campbell’s article on page 45, Dan DeWitt’s story on page 56, and this month’s installment of our spiritual disciplines series (p. 62). There will be fun stuff, too, like Lauren Farmer’s article on prom (p. 16) and our guide to baseball (p. 40), but it’s our hope that somewhere in this month’s devotions, articles, and features, you encounter a God who overwhelms you—with His love, with His mercy, and with the grand scale of His plan to redeem us all.

It’s easy for me to try to put God into a box, to try to come up with this picture of who He is that simultaneously makes Him more understandable and makes me feel comfortable. But that’s not God. It’s my prayer this month that you get a glimpse of who God really is—His holiness, His overwhelming love for you, and His power to redeem us all so that you get uncomfortable and let Him change you.