Never Fail to Look Up

 by Tom Fairman

It has been quite a week this week. Internationally, there appears to be no end in sight for the conflict in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Tigray remain at loggerheads with each other and the death toll in the West Bank keeps rising. At home, the new prime minister appears to be following a set of economic policies that everyone else has suggested will lead to higher inequality and cuts to public services alongside a rise in interest rates and energy prices.

Closer to home still, we will all have suffered in the struggles we face day to day. Whether that is through frustrations at work, arguments at home or illnesses of loved ones, our own battles can feel all encompassing. When faced with all of this it is very easy to get bogged down in the dirt and overwhelmed by the darkness.

The prophet Habakkuk was in a similar situation. Everywhere he looked he saw destruction, violence, strife and clamurous discord. He could not see a way out of it all and cried to God for Him to intervene. He was reaching out to something beyond like a person drowning stretching out their hand to find a lifeline, hoping and praying that there was something beyond all this, beyond the finite.

Currently, there is a fascinating documentary on Netflix called “A Trip to Infinity”. It is a mathematical and philosophical journey to try and discover what truly is infinity. Essentially the notion and drive of the filmmakers is to ask why are we fascinated by what is beyond us and whether we can ever reach the limits of our universe and our understanding. The conjecture is that everyone has this desire to reach beyond what they can see and understand, in the hope that there is something more.

As the film progresses, the mathematicians are asked whether or not infinity actually exists, which prompts a lot of uncomfortable shifting in chairs for to say it exists fundamentally undermines what infinity is, with the beautifully simple child’s phrase of infinity plus one. In the end, it is more akin to an idea that we can frame and use, allowing us to explore life in greater depths, giving us a vision to understand life with.

A vision is what God presents Habakkuk with, a vision of hope and deliverance, of salvation and justice. Yet it is a vision that has its own time and will come to fulfilment at some point, but if it is delayed, then we have to wait. Time is another beautifully infinite problem with a thousand years being like a second to God. We just need to stand firm in the knowledge it will be fulfilled.

So it is the vision itself and the hope in its fulfilment that sustains us when we seem overwhelmed. It is the glimpse of the infinite that provides us with the beauty and inspiration we need to see beyond what is currently in front of us. We just need to look up and raise our gaze beyond the mess that is in front of us to see it and believe in it, for if we don’t we will drown.

Therefore never let us fail to look up and see the beauty of the infinite God.