Some blokes in our church have toolsheds that contain everything… yes, as well as the kitchen sink!
C.S. Lewis tells how he once stood in a toolshed – I imagine it small and rickety, down the back of a mid-20thcentury English garden. It was daytime, yet the toolshed was unlit and all dark, apart from a gap above the door that let through a single beam of sunlight. He observed the beam thick with floating dust particles.
However, at one point he moved so that the beam fell on his eyes, and he looked up toward its source. Then instantly everything changed. Instead of looking at the beam, apart from it, he was now looking along the beam, from the inside. He was no longer seeing a mere beam of light in a dusty toolshed, but was absorbed into sparkling light, that played in the brilliant emerald green of the tree leaves outside, and millions of miles beyond that, into the fathomless, golden brilliance of the sun itself!
This is a great illustration of what it is like to know God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We cannot truly know them by just observing from the outside – for e.g., by finding out all that there is to know about them in the Bible or theology. This would just be like “looking at the beam”.
Rather, we must dwell in God, and have Him dwell in us, through faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:20). We can only know God from the inside! This is the equivalent of us “looking along the beam” – i.e., entering, living and “tasting” the very life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the promise of the Gospel to all who believe.
And since they created the earth, the sun, the universe and us, and are drawing it all toward a glorious goal, to have God is to have the whole universe and the best it has to offer!
So, however lowly your toolshed, the universe is yours!
Grace upon grace, Jonathan.