We Have No Idea

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. Psalm 139:17-18

Do you have any idea how many grains of sand there are in your child’s sandbox or your local beach or the world for that matter? As you can imagine that number must be huge. What’s even more staggering [to me] is that there are people in the world who are driven to determine the answers to these questions!

Anyway, the short answer to the question [how many grains of sand there are in the world] is estimated to be

700,500,000,000,000,000,000

or 7.5 x 10^18.  Here’s the formula – – – – ->

I Hate Math

My pastor recently shared that if a person lives to be 80 years old, he or she will have lived for 2.5 billion seconds. For the sake of keeping this blog short, I’m going to forgo the ‘reckoning’ and take my pastor’s word for it. When we divide the number of seconds into the number of sand grains we can determine that the thoughts God has towards each of us is 280,200,000 per second.  I think the number is low (very low), but nevertheless it’s a number worth repeating:

God thinks about you 280,000,000 a second“

How vast is the sum of His thoughts indeed!

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13

Frankly, I was baffled by what things God could possibly be thinking about, then I recalled the line I had incorporated into my prayers where I thank God for the blessings He provides to me daily — the ones I can plainly see and (perhaps more importantly) the ones I don’t see. Although I can’t prove it, I’m beginning to think that God sees to every single function of my body, every second of every day. God is overseeing every interaction I’m going to have whether it be with the air I breath, the people I meet, or the planet I trod upon. He is healing the pimple I squeezed this morning while simultaneously creating more white blood cells to form new pimples!  He is seeing to each heart beat, every muscle contraction, and each nerve impulse. At 280,000,000 a second it would seem that God leaves nothing whatsoever to chance.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?” “Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?” For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:33-36)

 And God Multitasks!

Ingeniously, God has woven us all together, so while He has a thought about me, He is also having a thought about people with whom I’ll be interacting in the present or in the future. For example, while in the middle of my Bible study today (in Isaiah), I felt compelled to pause my study and post a Bible verse on Facebook. Later on I was contacted by a grateful brother in the Lord who shared how ‘timely’ the passage was to him and how it was exactly what he needed to hear at the time. Since I now know God thinks about us so many times a second, it’s really not that difficult to understand how He can orchestrate these incredible occurrences.  All praise and thanks be to our God who loves us so much more than we can ever imagine.

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Matthew 6:26

Related articles (maybe):

• Just a Grain of Sand?!…. (throughhimwithhiminhim.wordpress.com)
• 30 Sand-sational Castles & Sculptures (geekpicks.net)
• Which Is Greater, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky? (wnyc.org)
• Are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the sky? Scientists finally have an answer (mnn.com)
• Which Is Greater, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky? (npr.org)
• Sand Sculpture – Fleeting Art (keytofelicity.wordpress.com)
• being a grain of sand (justdharmaquotes.wordpress.com)
• The Nerd’s Guide To Sandcastles (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• The Shell That Talked {and the God who cares} (campclem.com)
• Questions for Reflection – Psalm 103-105 (thisdaywithgod.wordpress.com)

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