Out of This World

Have you ever stepped into another world? I’m sure most of us have entered another world at one time or another in our imaginations during our childhoods. But there are times even as we grow older, if only we are willing to step out of our own busy worlds for a moment and look closely, when we find ourselves in another world. This past month, our family had just such an experience on the Oregon coast.

The Oregon coast is made up of rocky shores, crashing waves, and tangled bull kelp. Seals and sea lions play in the surf and whales spout far out to sea. But if you zoom in to the rocks and boulders piled along the shoreline, you will discover a different sort of place—you will enter the realm of the invertebrate. If you crouch down and peer closely into the cracks and crevices full of water among the rocks, you will discover a kingdom teeming with life. And if you allow yourself to forget all your own cares and worries for a moment and hone in on the flurry of activity beneath you, you will find that you are lost in another world. A world of plump green anemones and spiky purple sea urchins. A world of starfish, crabs, and sea cucumbers. A world of tiny darting fish and bumpy, curious octopuses.

At first glance, it may seem as though not much is happening. But if you watch for long enough, you will see that the creatures in the tidepools are all busy. And each one is enormously focused. He is totally consumed with his own business. The sea anemone has one mission: dinner. He waits patiently, but his sticky tentacles are at the ready to catch and curl around whatever happens to fall into his open arms. The mussels, barnacles, and starfish compete for space. The hermit crab marches across the rocky bottom, aware of no one save himself, wholly intent on hermit crab affairs.

I wonder if a tide-pool creature has ever taken the time to step back and look at his life and think about the fact that his existence is utterly ridiculous, that his tide-pool world is ludicrously silly. But I doubt any one of them has. They are lost in their own little world, consumed with their own business. There is nothing to life but eating and looking for food and competing for space. They have no idea that there is any such thing as a world outside of their small tide pool. They have never conceived of the fact that there are people and animals and goings on outside their little place. They have never dreamed of such things as machines and electricity and music and art and talking and laughter. They think their little world is all there is, and they live for it to the fullest. They are not even aware of each other. I wonder if a tidepool creature ever stops and thinks to himself, “What is the point?”

But what he does not realize is that the answer to this question is within his reach. He need only to look up, out of his world for a moment. But he does not. The tide-pool creatures go on with their lives and do not even realize that they are nothing, a speck in a busy world of incredible and important things.

And I wonder if very many people realize that they are a lot like the tide-pool creatures. I wonder if very many people take the time to step back and look at their lives and think about the fact that the human race is utterly ridiculous, ludicrously silly. We are lost in our own little world, totally consumed with our own business. We are so busy with so many tasks that seem so important. We eat and we work for our food, and we strive and toil and chase after a million dreams. We struggle for riches and houses and cars and beauty and love and friendship. We study and learn about the world around us, and we think we are smart and have it all figured out. We think we know things.

But unlike the tide-pool creatures, I think that all of us have, at one time or another, wondered if there is any such thing as a world outside of our little ball we call Earth. We toss around the idea that there are beings and important goings on outside our little place. We know, though we can never comprehend it, that there is Someone outside of our world Who is all-knowing and all-powerful, Who created a whole world out of nothing, Who is not bound by time or space or our understanding. One Who is totally above us and beyond us.

We ponder these realities and look at our meaningless existence and ask ourselves, “What is the point?” But we do not realize that the answer to this question is within our reach. We need only to look up, out of our little world for a moment. But we do not. In spite of what we know deep down to be true, we act like our little world is all there is and we live for it to the fullest. We ignore the great question by keeping busy with all our pointless tasks. We are hardly even aware of each other. We go on with our lives, and we do our best to close our eyes to the fact that we are nothing, a speck in a busy world of incredible and important things.

We look into the tide-pool world and we think, “What poor silly ridiculous little creatures,” and I wonder if God, our Creator, ever looks down into our world and thinks the same thing.

And yet this God, Who is so above us and beyond us and outside of us, loves and cares and knows about each one of us. We are nothing, and yet we are infinitely special and precious, because this God has designed and formed each one of us. And He gave us His Laws so that we could know what good is, so we could try to wrap our pathetic minds around what God in His perfect righteousness is like.

And when we fell short of His holiness and righteous glory, and His Laws showed us our helpless wickedness, He did something else. He took His holy, righteous, all-knowing, all-powerful Son, Who formed everything out of nothing and Who is beyond all time and space and our understanding, and made Him into a weak and helpless and pathetic human infant. And this God-man grew up into our ludicrous world and lived among us and showed us in person what God is like and tried to turn our puny minds out of this little speck of a world and into the important one.

Then He took our wickedness upon Himself and died on a cross to take our punishment. He appeased God’s just wrath, and then His body was taken down and shut up and sealed in a tomb. But this was not a mere human, for He Himself held the power over life and death. He came alive once more and conquered death and the devil and He left this world and returned again to His own glorious world.

Fellow human, I write all this to remind you that we were not made for this pathetic, decaying world. We were made for another world, a glorious one, to be with God forever. And we can be with a holy righteous God even though we are evil because Jesus took our punishment on Himself and satisfied God’s anger through His own blood. But we do not have to be with God in His glorious world. We can choose to resist God, and when we die we can go to a world without Him, where there is only evil and fire and suffering and darkness, for there is no good thing apart from God.

This world will pass away, along with all our toil and wealth and beauty and dreams. We can hope and dream and strive and enjoy this world’s pleasures, but one day, it will all be gone. It is a speck. It is nothing.

Reader, what I am asking you to do is this: Will you step out of this world for a moment? Step back and look at your silly pointless life. Stop ignoring the questions of your searching heart and instead face them. But then, look up. Do what a tide-pool creature is not willing to do. Think about the greater world above, the one that really matters. Consider your Creator, before it is too late.

Reader, will you rip your eyes away from this speck, this nothingness, and set your mind on things above? Will you tear yourself from your own pointless business and mind a business far greater? Will you continue to live for your own world, or will you live for the other, better one? It is not in your imagination. It is not child’s play. Reader, will you dare leave your old life behind you and step into another world?

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