Daily Prayer: When God Is Too Big for My Brain to Handle
Daily Prayer: When God Is Too Big for My Brain to Handle
"Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom."
— Psalm 145:3
Here's a thing I noticed this morning before my second cup of coffee was even finished: I was already trying to figure God out.
Not in a deep theological way. More like — I was praying about something that felt stuck, and somewhere mid-sentence I started mentally drafting what I thought God should probably do about it. As if He needed my editorial input.
Classic Monday morning move, honestly.
The Part of the Verse Nobody Talks About
Psalm 145:3 is one of those verses people embroider on pillows. "Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise." Beautiful. True. Easy to nod along to.
But the second half is the part that stopped me cold this week.
His greatness no one can fathom.
No one. Not a little bit beyond us. Not slightly out of reach. No one can fathom it. That's a hard stop. A full wall. The kind of boundary that doesn't move no matter how smart or spiritually mature you become.
And I'll be honest — my first reaction wasn't awe. It was something closer to mild annoyance. Because I like to understand things. I like things to make sense. I am the person who reads the last chapter of an instruction manual before assembling anything.
Summer Has a Way of Making This Feel Real
It's summer, which in theory sounds restful and in practice means the rhythm of the house is completely off. My adult kid is home more. My husband and I are navigating a schedule that keeps shifting. Work doesn't actually slow down just because the calendar says June — nobody told my inbox that.
And somewhere in the middle of all that noise and heat and the low hum of everyone needing something, I'm supposed to be praising a God whose greatness I literally cannot wrap my brain around.
Which — okay. Fine. But can we talk about how hard that is on a Tuesday when the dishwasher is full again and you haven't had a moment alone since last Thursday?
What "Unfathomable" Actually Does for Me
Here's the thing I'm slowly coming around to, and I mean slowly — like, turning-a-ship-not-a-speedboat slowly:
If God's greatness is truly beyond what anyone can fathom, that means it's also beyond my worst-case scenarios.
It means the thing I've been worried about — the conversation with my kid that didn't go the way I hoped, the work situation that feels like it's stalling, the marriage moment last week that was more tense than tender — none of those things are bigger than a God whose greatness has no ceiling.
That's not a bumper sticker. That's actually a lot.
Because I keep trying to calculate God's capacity based on my own experience. I keep thinking He's working within the same limitations I am. And He is simply... not.
Praise That Doesn't Require Full Understanding
David wrote this psalm. The same David who also wrote things like "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" (Psalm 13:1). So he wasn't some serene monk untouched by real life when he penned Psalm 145. He was a person. A complicated, sometimes-a-mess, deeply human person.
And he still wrote: Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise.
Not "great is the Lord once I understand His plan." Not "worthy of praise after things work out." Just — great. Worthy. Now.
I think that's the invitation here. Not to figure God out, but to praise Him while we can't. To hold both things at once: I don't fully get this, and He is still good. Still great. Still worthy.
That's actually a more honest kind of faith than the tidy version, I think.
What I'm Taking Into the Rest of This Week
I'm going to try — and I mean try, no promises — to stop mentally submitting suggestions to God about how my life should go.
Not because I don't care about the outcomes. I really, really do. But because I keep forgetting that I'm not the one whose greatness no one can fathom. He is. And that should probably shift how much I trust my own limited read on what's happening.
His greatness doesn't shrink when my circumstances feel hard. My view just gets narrow sometimes. There's a difference.
A Prayer for Today
Lord, I'll be straight with You — I keep trying to fit You into a size I can manage. I do it without even realizing it. I start praying and end up advising, which is a little embarrassing when I say it out loud like that.
Thank You for being bigger than what I can figure out. Thank You that Your greatness doesn't have an edge I can find and stand on. That should scare me, but honestly, today it's mostly just a relief.
Help me praise You before things resolve. Help me trust You in the middle of the week, in the middle of the mess, in the middle of conversations I don't know how to have. You are great. You are worthy. I really do believe that — even on the days it's more of a choice than a feeling.
Amen.
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