Unnumbered

Diana Tanner

It is estimated that as many as 2 million people stood in front of Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 20, to watch the first black man, Barack Obama, be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.

TV images, beaming the event across the globe, showed an endless sea of people arranged in orderly fashion. They had gathered hours before to gain the best vantage points for this historic occasion.

As I watched this impressive earthly scene, my mind was drawn to the description in Revelation of the redeemed from all ages, gathered together on the Sea of Glass (see Revelation 7:9-17). I could barely comprehend a sea of 2 million people, let alone the unnumbered throng standing before God's throne.

It is possible for me to conceptualise 30,000 to 70,000 people crammed into a sports stadium. With some imagination, I can just manage 500,000 watching a spectacular fireworks display. The 2 million gathered in Washington had a touch of fantasy about them, even as I viewed their undefinable forms through the lens of a television camera.

We put a number on the world's current population, with future predictions just adding more zeros. But this number never moves beyond the printed medium in our visualisation. People of such a magnitude that they can't be numbered defies any reasonable effort to be meaningfully considered.

It was impossible for all those people gathered on that chilly January day in Washington to have firsthand vision of the ceremony they were there to see. For them, just to be a part of the crowd would have to satisfy the notion of "being there." But not so on the Sea of Glass. The crowd that gathers there will, with their own eyes, view from seemingly front-row position the glorious events on that momentous day.

How will this happen? I don't know. I dwell within the physical limitations of my small world. To try and grasp the vastness of universal themes stretches my imagination in an exercise of mental callisthenics.

What does all of this mean to me? When I stand with a crowd the size of the population of the earth, I become faceless and shapeless to those watching from vantage points afar. But not to God. It doesn't matter how many people have lived or ever will live, God knows each one personally, intimately and completely. He knows the number of hairs on my head (see Matthew 10:30), and the hairs on the head of every other individual. The immensity that defines God in no way diminishes my importance in His sight.

He died for me: that thought alone gives me strength and courage to keep going. That thought brings meaning to what would otherwise be a meaningless existence. That thought gives hope in the midst of helplessness and hopelessness. And God, the immeasurable One, will, on that wonderful day at the beginning of our eternity, be visible to everyone who is gathered in front of Him. He is visible because His greatness overwhelms our smallness. The throng on the Sea may be innumerable but I, and every other person, will interact with God one on one, just as we have been doing all along.

This has been a feature from Record, February 21, 2009.