God Fills the Earth

There is nowhere you can go on this earth that is empty. 

Think about that for a second. Sometimes, we get it in our minds that we need to just get away from it all, go out to some secluded place where there's nothing but us and the wide open spaces. We talk about hitting the road or hitting the trail or taking some time or making some space, but no matter where we go or how we get there, we are always surrounded by fullness. 

Even the air that we breathe is not empty; it is filled with elements and movement and remnants, all the stuff of being in this world. 

If you went anywhere that was truly empty, you'd be in a black hole and be sucked into oblivion and probably, I don't know, explode. Or implode. Either way, it would be messy. 

Most of the time, we don't realize how full the world around us is. It's easy to look past the things that are obvious and think that what is left is nothing. We turn off the television and think we're living in silence, the absence of noise, but it doesn't take long before we start to hear the sounds of the refrigerator running or the lights buzzing. We turn off the lights, and we think we're in darkness, the absence of light, but our eyes adjust and we realize that even the smallest bit of light remains, and it's enough to give us at least the outlines of the things around us. 

We are never surrounded by nothing; we are always surrounded by everything. And even if we were to remove every bit of sensory stimulation from the world around us, it would not in the least diminish the fullness of the world. 

In the beginning, everything was formless and void. The kind of big, big suck that is emptiness and oblivion. The kind of place where you'd probably explode. Or implode. 

Then, God. Then, God spoke. Then, God created. Then, God formed. Then, God filled. Then, God looked at what we might one day consider the empty spaces, and He filled those, too. He filled them, Psalms tells us, with His love (Psalm 33:5). 

And it's that love, I think, that catches us the way that other things do when we turn down the noise and the busyness and the stimulation. It's that love that, when everything else is quiet, we can still hear buzzing in the background. It's that love that, when everything else seems dark, is the little bit of light that lets us keep seeing. It's that love that, when our experience is muffled by living in a fallen world, still seems like something. 

It's that love that, even far away from it all, in some secluded place, in the wide open spaces, on the open roads or trails, when we're making some space, no matter where we go, reminds us that we are not really alone nor are we ever truly empty. 

His love fills the whole earth. 

And thank God it does. Or else we might, I don't know, explode. Or implode. 

Either way, it would be messy.