The Greatness of God

Isaiah 40 offers comfort and hope to the Israelites, assuring them of God's presence and power in times of adversity.

References:

• “Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak. Consider the former: the world is a monster… You say, there is no right and wrong in nature; right and wrong is a human concept. Precisely: we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world… This view requires that a monstrous world running on chance and death, careening blindly from nowhere to nowhere, somehow produced wonderful us. I crawled out of a sea of amino acids, and now I must whirl around and shake my fist at that sea and cry Shame! [for cruelty]…OR consider the alternative… that it is human feeling that is freakishly amiss… Other creatures manage to have effective matings and even stable societies without great emotions, and they have a bonus in that they need not ever mourn. (But some higher animals have emotions that we think are similar to ours: dogs, elephants, otters, and the sea mammals mourn their dead. Why do that to an otter? What creator could be so cruel, not to kill otters, but to let them care?)… All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then go back to the creek, lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first.” Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

• “Thou art coming to a king; large petitions with thee bring. For his grace and power are such; none can ever ask too much.” John Newton
• "There’s a certain slant of light on winter afternoons, That oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes. Heavenly hurt it gives us, we can find no scar, But internal difference where the meanings are." Emily Dickinson, There's a Certain Slant of Light