Every time I walk through here, I can't help but think how much I LOVE libraries and the huge bookstores where you can go in and browse (and even have a cup of coffee while you peruse through the treasures discovered while mingling in the aisles). What a beautiful gift from God it is, to be able to read! I look forward to the day when I have no pressing assignments to complete...when I can casually stroll through the aisles and poke my nose into books of my own choosing.
Today, I ran up to the front of the library, where the staff has so graciously set up a coffee/tea/cookie table as a reward for the diligence of students who are studying. On my way back to the study area, I once again walked through the aisles of books, and marveled. I wondered how many books were in the university library...thousands, probably...and then I had this amazing thought: I wonder how many ideas and thoughts were contained in all of the volumes? Think about it - think about any given book. How long would it take you to identify and log each individual thought and idea in any given book? There are main thoughts and ideas, and also supporting thoughts for all of the main thoughts. And, being a university library, these are no "lightweight" thoughts. They are weighty thoughts about heavy-duty ideas. Staggering consideration!
The Holy Spirit - in His amazing ability to relate hard-to-grasp truth to a mortal man - used this moment of wonder to take an intangible truth and contextualize it in a tangible way:
Psalm 139:17-18 - How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. (Amplified Version)
The Holy Spirit used these books to take something intangible (thoughts) and frame them in a tangible way (printed pages full of thoughts), to put this verse into context for me. (How super-cool is that...and consider the thought that He knew exactly where I was and what I was thinking, in spite of all of the big and important things that are going on in the world...yet He cares enough about me to take the time to show me this wonderful thing...)
How many thoughts are in a book? How many books in a library? How many libraries in the world? How much time would it take to go through each and every one and add up the sum of all of the thoughts? I can't even begin to imagine the time it would take - decades, maybe lifetimes! But it would not be impossible, as long as time did not run out on the earth.
In comparison to creating a catalog of all the thoughts contained in all of the books in all of the libraries across the globe, it would be much harder to count all of the sand in the world! Yet the bible tells me that His thoughts for ME outnumber all of the sand in the world! And Jeremiah further defines these thoughts for us:
Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. (Amplified Version)
All I could do is stand there and scan all of the books on the shelves I could see (and imagine the ones I couldn't see)...and consider the sum of the wonderful, hopeful thoughts that he has for me!
The next time you go into a library or one of the book superstores, I pray that you remember these words and consider how numerous and wonderful His thoughts are toward you! I'm really hoping that you are stopped dead in your tracks, as I was. I hope you will take a moment to consider all of the books on all of the shelves, and remember that the thoughts He has for you are greater than all of the thoughts in those books, combined!
PS ...To make it even more amazing, consider the fact that there are billions of people on this earth, and He has unique yet equally numerous thoughts for each and every one of us! That blows my mind! But that's another thought for another day, because now I am dreadfully behind in studying for my Psych 3100 test!
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