Have you ever watched an ant? I know, it's not exciting, unless you happen to come upon an ant war. But you ought to sit down and watch an ant sometime just going about it's business. An ant's universe really isn't all that big, and for the most part they go about their time searching out for food and then bringing it home, nothing exciting but very vital if the ants are going to survive. In fact, their world is so small that they do everything by smell, one ant goes out finds food and leaves a trail of smell for the other ants to follow and off they go all in a file grabbing the food and bringing back to the nest. Have you ever seen what happens if the trail is messed up in some way? The ants will get confused and start running around trying to find the original trail, it never even crosses their mind that there may be another way to get to the food.
Now imagine with me that we are a bunch of ants. Our entire known universe is a patch of grass behind my house in Arkansas. For us, this means that our world is hard packed red dirt and rocks with a variety of grasses and wild flowers and during the summer very hot and dry. We do have our enemies from 10,000 variations of spiders to other ants in other colonies, but for the most part our world is very consistent and methodical. We search for food and we find our food and attack anything that threatens the nest or our queen. That's our life, that is our universe. Don't mess with it.
Seems perhaps a bit silly in a way, an ant does not see beyond it's own borders and can't begin to understand, as we do, that there is much more to this universe than just that patch of land that they occupy. Try telling an ant that not only is there their patch of land, but there are millions of patches of land all around them and it just keeps going on and on. They would probably think your nuts because all they know and or wish to understand is just that which they see in front of them, that which they can smell as it were. This, by the way, is not a slam on ants. G-D gave them their place and they are doing exactly what G-D intended for them to do. I simply use the ant and it's habits to illustrate some things about us humans and to show you what I mean we will turn to space for a minute.
Remember that I talked about the ant and it's territory. We are very much like the ant in that respect. We have our own little universe in which we live and we have our various routines that we live by and just like the ant, if it gets messed with we tend to freak out. What makes it bad though is that we have a choice in what we do and how we think and yes even how we view the world and the universe.
The other day I was looking at pictures that have been sent from deep space from various telescopes and to say that they boggle the mind is putting it mildly. Stars and Nebula of various sizes shapes and colors, thousands of star systems in distant galaxies that we are just now, for the first time, able to see. They are now discovering that some of these "stars" that we have been looking at are actually entire galaxies thanks to these telescopes and they have even found one place that is creating new stars. One of those "newborn" stars is 10 times the size of our sun and scientists have admitted that they don't even know how that's possible because it goes above and beyond what they had always understood about star formations. Simply put, that despite everything that we have ever thought we knew about the stars, our scientist are discovering just how little they actually know, much to their credit I might add. This is what made me think of ants and us.
We have a choice, we can continue to live in our little universe and look at things from our limited perspective, never lifting our eyes to look and see if that's actually true or not. We can scurry about smelling the trail left to us by others who think the same way and yes we will find sustenance, but that will be it.
Or, we can lift our eyes up to the heavens, to the night sky, and realize that not only do we know very little, but that which we thought we knew is wrong as well. We may have somethings right. But when you consider the vastness of the universe and you look at what G-D has created out there, that we are only now starting to see, you come to that awesome, wonderful place of humbleness where you realize that we know nothing. That's the place where G-D can use you. When you understand, from a humble perspective how little you know in this universe, that is when G-D can teach you the most.
Take some time to watch an ant and then take the time on a clear night to look up into the heavens and see if you have one of those Job moments:
Job 42:1-6
Then Job answered the LORD and said “I know that You can do everything,And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.Listen, please, and let me speak You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,But now my eye sees You.Therefore I abhor myself,And repent in dust and ashes.”
Job is one of my favorite people because he understood what it was like to loose everything and still remain faithful to G-D, and in that position he came to realize just how little he knew about G-D and the universe. He looked up and was humbled.
How much do you think you know? Are you like the ant who can't see beyond his small world or are you like our scientist's who are starting to understand the universe is much different and much larger than they thought?
Is your theology the the only right way and does everything that is from G-D fit into it? Is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, the things of G-D are so huge that we can't possibly understand it all. Could it be that the things that science is now seeing in deep space is G-D's way of telling us just how much like little ants we have been?
I'm not slamming on your religious beliefs, I love HaShem and I try to serve Him with what knowledge that I have of Him and from Him. I am simply asking you to think and to look up and see if there is anything to what I am saying. The universe and the G-D who created it will humble you just as He did to Job, if you will allow it and perhaps introduce you to a universe that you never even knew existed.
Shalom,
Ignacio
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