How Far Does God Reach?

During May we were studying Psalm 71, in which David remembers how God has been with him throughout his life. As David gets older he urges God not to 'cast him off', and to continue being his refuge that he has known for as long as he can remember.

David's memories of God's goodness throughout his eventful life lead him to verses of praise. He is convinced that God will lift him up from whatever troubles he may face. In verse 19 he exclaims...

Your righteousness, O God,

reaches the high heavens.

You who have done great things,

O God, who is like you?

Psalm 71:19 (ESV)

David paints a picture here of how far a quality or characteristic of God can reach- far beyond David's (or our!) imagination. This led us to think about other aspects of God which we appreciate, and other ways of describing the infinite distance these reach.

A few minutes later we had two quite substantial lists, which you will be able to read below. The first list has a title "Great is your..." and the second has "Which reaches...". This is what we came up with...

Great is your...

faithfulness

grace

gentleness

hope

presence

goodness

love

compassion

mercy

patience

justice

salvation

Which reaches...

to the skies!

to the depths of the ocean!

as far as the unseen stars!

to infinity and beyond!

to eternity!

beyond time and space!

beyond history's boundries!

as far as the tiniest atom!

to every grain of sand!

to the hidden places!

everywhere I can't think of!

to all nations!

Next we tried something that perhaps you might like to try too. People selected one word from the first list, and a phrase from the second- to create what we called a 'praise phrase'. So for example, you could have...

Great is your hope which reaches to all nations!

Or, how about...

Great is your patience which reaches to eternity!

These lists combine to create something we have called our 'Praise Phrase Generator'! We hope that this might be something that might help you in your own prayers or worship. I am reliably informed that you could create 144 different phrases with these lists- even more if you add your own suggestions to them!

Which phrase could you come up with which describes God's character? Can you think of anything we could add to either of our lists?