Memory and Growth

Deep and Wide

Deep and wide, deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide
Deep and wide, deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide

Hmmm and wide, hmmm and wide
There’s a fountain flowing hmmm and wide
Hmmm and wide, hmmm and wide
There’s a fountain flowing hmmm and wide

(Note: The song continues like this until all words except “and” are eventually substituted by “Hmmm.”)

Do you remember this song from children’s church? I had forgotten about every part, and there isn’t much to it, except the words “deep and wide.”

With that memory comes a sense of the vastness of God’s love. Yet, that sense is one that has grown over the years and did not exist as it does now. In other words, I did not realize that God’s love was deep and wide and a flowing fountain when I sung this song as a child. It was just a fun song.

As my memory of this song and my growing understanding of God’s depth and width came to the surface of my thinking recently, I began thinking about what it means that God is deep and wide.

Wider is Deeper

Getting to know God in a deeper way involves knowing him in wider ways. As I explore God in more and more areas, my depth of understanding grows. So, studying science or history or health can be paths to knowing God in wider ways that lead to knowing him more deeply.

Moses and Paul, among others in the Bible, got to know God at deeper and wider levels more so than most people do. Yet, even they knew there was still more to know, that they had not cracked the full width and depth of knowing God.

Pursuing a Life of Depth

In a world where people often lack appropriate boundaries, we forget that God doesn’t have boundaries nor does he need them. Sometimes he acts within boundaries, as the Bible often tells us, but those are there for our benefit.

If I go too far deep or too far wide in any area of my life, I become spread thin. Either I take on too much, or I develop unrealistic expectations of others. Yet, even in my limitedness, I can know a limitless God. By pursing a life of depth, I can know God in deeper and wider ways. My understanding of God grows as I interact with him.

This happens as I am grateful for all he’s done in my life and as I seek him continually and consistently in his word. It happens when I create a habit of prayer and learn to live a life of unceasing prayer. Above all, it’s about letting the Holy Spirit guide and direct me in all of these areas and realizing my utter helplessness without him.

Immeasurably More

After talking about how God’s plan is for all people to come to know him (Ephesians 3:1-14), Paul prays a prayer that connects with this idea of God’s vastness.

“For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Not only do we, through Paul words, grasp the depth and width of God, we realize that even what we imagine him to be like is limited. We can then stand in wonder of the fact that he goes superabundantly beyond our imaginations.