Biblical proportions

I remember once, in my "former life" as a cabinetmaker, receiving a call from a very, very, very wealthy woman who wanted to come by my shop and get my advice on the design of something she and her husband wanted to build.  Having done a great deal of work for her I knew there was no guessing what on earth she was thinking about building!   Over the years her eccentricity had pushed my skill and creative imagination to the limits ... not to mention my patience.  

I was in the office when she arrived, and when I walked out she had just heaved a massive roll of blueprints onto my workbench.   As she unrolled this colossal tree stump size roll of blueprints, I'm sure I audibly gasped, as I began to realize the size of this house they were thinking of building. I'm not even sure you can reasonably call it a house .... it was nearly 40,000 square feet!  

Regaining my mental footing I asked her what she needed my help with.  She told me that she was having trouble determining the size of the laundry room (as if she was ever going to do laundry!) and wanted my opinion on whether what was drawn was big enough.  What was drawn was nearly 20' x 40' - which staggers the imagination for a laundry room for a family of four!  But she couldn't visualize it.  Her problem was that she couldn't appreciate the scale of the blueprints. Everything just seemed so small to her - which may be why the house ended up nearly 40,000 sq. ft.!

One of the biggest problems we have as evangelical Christians is not so much error (though I've noticed a few popular writers "emerging" who seem to enjoy dabbling with it), but rather scale or dimension.  Like the woman who visited my shop, it appears that for many of us it is extremely difficult to get our minds around Biblical proportions.  Not only is there the problem that Piper likes to describe as viewing life and all things religious through the wrong end of the telescope,  but we also tend to view small things through a cultural microscope so that the wrong things, or at least very small and inconsequential things tend to become big in our eyes. As a result, we not only tend to lose sight of the greatness of God, but also the dignity and nobility of man made in the image of God ... and as important and urgent as the former is, it is the latter that concerns me most here in Africa.  ... But I'm going to have to wait till tomorrow to expand on it.  It's been a long day.