Seemeth it a small thing?

This comes in the middle of Ezekial 34, which is a chapter about shepherding.  In the middle, it switches to a talk with the flock itself.

18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture,

but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures?

and to have drunk of the deep waters,

but ye must foul the residue with your feet?

 19 And as for my flock,

they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet;

and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.

 20 ¶Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them;

Behold, I,

even I,

will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.

(Ezekiel 34:18-20)

It took me several years to figure out what this was talking about, when it refers to cattle eating the good pasture and then treading down the rest with their feet.  It refers to members who are participating in nourishing spiritual experiences and then ruining those experiences for others, whether with a lack of attention, or inappropriate comments, or criticism, or improper deportment.    

Ruining it for others arises out of a lack of reverence and appreciation for the blessings of those experiences.  The question that comes at the beginning is very apt—“Seemeth it a small thing unto you?”   When we are not reverence or grateful, then yes, it does seems a small thing to us.  Everything is “no big deal” when we aren’t reverent. 

The Lord doesn’t let these things go.  It says in verse 20 that He will judge between fat cattle and lean cattle.  It is not clear whether the “fat” cattle are those that are nourished spiritually or whether they are so self-satisfied that they aren’t willing to ‘eat’ any more or let anyone else do so.  It is not clear whether the “lean” cattle are those who have been deprived because of others’ lack of reverence or whether they are deprived because of their own lack of reverence.  Whichever is the case, though, we are assured that the Lord will hold accountable those who ruin it for others.

This is a good scripture to use if you’re trying to teach a church class and someone is consistently driving away the Spirit with smart-aleck comments.  If my mom had known about this one when I was a teen, she probably would have used it on me on a few occasions.

The heavens, they are many

Image: http://thingstolookathigh.com/outer-space-stars/

And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. (Moses 1:37)

That word “heavens” is baffling.  We know only one sky and one space, so it is hard to say in what manner there can be many.  Because if there are many heavens, then that means there is a discrete and discernable boundary between one and another.  Meteorology has advanced to the point that it can detect pressure gradients in the atmosphere and cold and warm fronts and temperature differences, but that makes sky into amorphous flowing blobs; it doesn’t result in a countable sky.  And it only has to do with earth.    So there must be other astronomical bodies that must have their own heavens with their own characteristics.  And probably space has its own “weather” and gradients and concentrations of particles.

And God can quantify all of this!  He is the ultimate scientist. 

Things that make my brain explode inside my skull

Last week when I had to get ready to teach a primary song about reverence, I found myself wondering where reverence comes from. We all know that reverence is more than just behaving respectfully. Where does that respect come from? I asked myself, “How do I cultivate reverence for Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ?”

I remembered some things I learned in my astronomy class in high school. (Humor me on this little scientific diversion..)


This picture has squished all the planets together in one frame and distorted all the sizes of the planets and the sun. The big planets are much bigger and all the distances are much more far apart. (If you want to teach your kids about the real distances and sizes of the planets, here is a link to instructions for a “planet walk” you can do to help bring the proper scale into perspective.)

Consider each of these things carefully..

The earth is about 8,000 miles across.
Light travels about 186,000 miles per second.
(If the earth were completely hollow and two mirrors were placed opposite each other at the equator, light could bounce between them 23 times in a single second.)

The earth is about 93 MILLION miles from the sun.
It is so far away that it takes light 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth.
Pluto’s average distance from the sun is about 40 times greater than the earth’s. It is about 5.3 light-hours away from the sun.

The closest star to us is Proxima Centari, a red dwarf star 4.2 light-years away.

Now let's jump to the galaxy level.


The sun is about 2/3rds of the way out from the middle of the Milky Way galaxy, or about 25,000 light years away from the center (1).
The Milky Way galaxy is an estimated 100,000 light years across (2). Our solar system is so small in comparison that the smallest dot in its approximate location on the map would exaggerate its size by 100 times.
Astronomers estimate our galaxy may have between 200 to 300 BILLION stars in it (3).

Now.. check out this next picture..


Look at all those galaxies… *

I remember when I saw a picture very similar to this in my astronomy class, it made my brain explode inside my skull. HEAVENLY FATHER CREATED ALL OF THAT AND MORE! It is a testimony to the glory, majesty, and power of God. This awes me to no end. That awe leads to a deep sense of reverence for God.

Mind-blowing Concept #2

There’s something else that brings me to a feeling of deep awe and reverence. When I think of all the mistakes I have made and the sins I have committed and the pain I have experienced in my life, it is amazing to me that Jesus Christ suffered for all of it too. But then when I remember He also suffered those things for my family…

and for my ward…

and for all the people of our church…

and for all the people living on earth right now…

and for all the people who have ever lived or who will yet live on earth….

That causes my brain to explode again inside my skull.

Mind-blowing Concept #3

Heavenly Father hears my prayers and He answers them. He understands my language. He also hears and answers prayers in every other language, even when the prayers are being said simultaneously. The idea that He can make sense of, let alone respond to such a staggering array of messages, languages, pleas, thanks, praise, and more causes my brain to explode again inside my skull.

All of this brings me to a feeling of great reverence for God. With an awareness of Heavenly Father’s powers of creation, we can trust His purposes for us. With an awareness of Jesus’s magnificent demonstration of love in the atonement, we can obey the commandment to repent. With an awareness of Heavenly Father’s ability to hear and understand so many different messages directed to Him, we gain the ability to trust His responsiveness.

Awe for God leads to reverence.
Reverence toward God leads to love and trust.
Love and trust in God leads to obedience.

* There are many galaxies in this picture, and some of them have so much gravitational energy that they actually bend the light of other galaxies, producing multiple images of them. Google "gravitational lens."

Sources

1 Gene Smith Astronomy Tutorial, “The Milky Way Galaxy”, http://casswww.ucsd.edu/archive/public/tutorial/MW.html

2 “Milky Way Galaxy”, Space Yuga, Feb. 6, 2011, http://spaceyuga.com/milky-way-galaxy/

3 Nicholos Wethington, December 16, 2008, “How Many Stars are in the Milky Way?”, http://www.universetoday.com/22380/how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way/

Images

Milky Way Galaxy Image from http://spaceyuga.com/milky-way-galaxy/,

Galaxy Cluster Image from Starts with a Bang, http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/hey_dark_matter_where_are_you.php

Solar system Image from Purple Slinky, http://purpleslinky.com/trivia/science/amazing-things-about-our-solar-system/