Small & Big

I love how much the world offers and how much we have offered to it. We could spend our entire lives devoting ourselves to one “work” or hobby, one artistry (poems, movies, music, name one) and there’s always more we could’ve learned, more we could’ve created. There is a limitlessness to art and knowledge— to the world itself. Take it you love music. You could spend all your days listening to music, discovering new artists, making new playlists; and there would still be millions of songs you’ve never heard. Genres you weren’t aware of. Whole languages of music you had no idea existed. And this isn’t even you participating in the act of creating music— it’s just you listening to it! (And how much music did you not discover because you limited yourself to only music? What other pursuits could have brought you to new artists, new songs that you would have never heard unless you extended your curiosities to other places?)

There is a limitlessness to art and knowledge— to the world itself.

My interest in this subject started earlier this year while I was sitting in my university’s public library. As I looked at the stacks and stacks of books, I reflected on how there was so much to learn, so much to see. While “knowing more” can puff up, I think the vastness of human scholarship emphasizes our finitude (our limits), not diminishes it. We are still limited in this expansive world. Think about it: even the most educated, learned person who has written many groundbreaking studies and commentaries is only a master of what is in their reach— and they don’t even understand that exhaustively. They have never read all the books in just one public library. There is much they haven’t considered, much they do not know.

This limitedness “to know” does not make truth a sort of big-foot— non-existent but ever pursued. Rather, truth is the best surprise at your doorstep. It is a gem found under rock, an answer that wakes you from sleep. It is ever-present and (rightly) ever-pursued. Although we’re limited in our ability to hold truth— it doesn’t mean we cannot hold it at all. All the thousands of books in just one public library show how precious truth is— that we would attempt to bound what we find in paper, thread, and glue. It’s quite darling of us, really.

All the thousands of books in just one public library show how precious truth is— that we would attempt to bound what we find in paper, thread, and glue. It’s quite darling of us, really.

  How incredible it is— the sheer breadth and depth of the human experience. It makes me a bit emotional. That we can connect with other people across time and space through words and tunes. Spend your whole life exploring just the present, and you’ll never experience the entire wealth of the future. And with only exploring the present, you will inevitably discover how the past has influenced it, how there is a complicated history to everything you interact with. I hope this doesn’t discourage you, but rather enlivens your soul. It doesn’t matter who you are— there is still much more for you to find. And yet, you are not the one responsible to hold, or know, it all. How beautiful and comforting is that? This is the comical contrast of a human: vast enough to be the image of the Living God, Creator, and small enough to never know one thing exhaustively.

I think that’s a wonderful thing.

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Quotes & What’s Relevant:

Ecclesiastes 3:11:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

To be pretentious and quote Charles Spurgeon (even though I’ve barely read him):

“It [the deep things of God] is a soil into which one may dig and dig as deep as ever you will, and still never exhaust the golden nuggets which lie within it. I am, however, comforted by this fact, that these subjects are so fruitful that even we who can only scratch the surface of them shall yet get a harvest from them.”

My favorite quote from The Hobbit (The last words of the book, p. 305):

“‘Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true after a fashion!’ 

said Bilbo.

‘Of course!’ said Gandalf. ‘And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you’ve had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your soul benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!’

‘Thank goodness!’ said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar.”

For a poem related to the subject, click here.