Book Review: Indescribable

Indescribable: Encountering the Glory of God in the Beauty of the Universe
by: Louie Giglio and Matt Redman

Get this book…and allow yourself to soak in the amazingness of God.

I have listed some things below that I highlighted while reading.

• Our desire is to paint as big a picture of God as we possibly can, expanding people’s concept of His greatness and glory.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course.… We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
• A sense of smallness and awe invades our hearts while in reverent wonder we consider the expanse of the universe and our tiny estate. The feeling is that of falling up, the humility that settles on the soul when we consider the immensity of the world in which we live.
• Socrates said, “Philosophy begins in wonder.”4 I think it’s true that worship begins in wonder as well.
• The heavens are telling the glory of God, their expanse declares the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, and night after night they tell us what they know. There is no place where there is speech where their voices are not heard. (Psalm 19:1–3, author’s paraphrase)
• THE SIGNIFICANCE AND JOY IN MY SCIENCE COMES IN THOSE OCCASIONAL MOMENTS OF DISCOVERING SOMETHING NEW AND SAYING TO MYSELF, “SO THAT’S HOW GOD DID IT.” —HENRY “FRITZ” SCHAEFER GRAHAM PERDUE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL QUANTUM CHEMISTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
• Indescribable, uncontainable You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name; You are amazing, God.
• In the book of Isaiah, for example, God keeps pointing us to the cosmos as a reminder of His great and unmatchable strength: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens. (44:24)
• My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. (45:12)
• Perhaps one of the most striking things is not all that we can see—but all that we can’t.
• THE VERY ORDER, DISPOSITION, BEAUTY, CHANGE AND MOTION OF THE WORLD AND OF ALL VISIBLE THINGS SILENTLY PROCLAIM THAT IT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN MADE BY GOD. —AUGUSTINE
• “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:3–4).
• God makes worshippers out of wonderers. If we will allow them, the beauty and vastness of the cosmos will help lead us to higher ground in worship.
• Reverence is often the fruit of reflection, and reflection often the result of stillness.
• Albert Einstein: “He … who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.”
• “All things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16).
• As crazy as it seems, your voice is not incidental in a universe as vast as the one we find ourselves in. You are a unique human being, fearfully and wonderful made by the God of all creation. Your praise makes Him smile. First, because He loves you, and second, because He knows that when you’re singing His song you’ve touched and tasted the greatest thing in all the world.
• The all-powerful hands of the Maker became the nail-pierced hands of the Savior. He who is everything made Himself nothing. The One who commands the Sun, Moon, and stars in their courses above took on the nature of a servant. The God of creation, who holds all things together, humbled Himself and became obedient to death on a cross. Of all the mysteries of the universe, these are the greatest.
• The beautiful truth is this: He who calls out the stars, and names them one by one, knows each of us by name also. It is grace of astronomic proportions.
• BUT IN THESE LAST DAYS [GOD] HAS SPOKEN TO US BY HIS SON, WHOM HE APPOINTED HEIR OF ALL THINGS, AND THROUGH WHOM HE MADE THE UNIVERSE. —HEBREWS 1:2
• I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. (Isa. 44:24)
• My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. (Isa. 45:12)
• By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Heb. 11:3)
• HANDS THAT FLUNG STARS INTO SPACE, TO CRUEL NAILS SURRENDERED. —GRAHAM KENDRICK
• Your greatest glory is not a greater you, but you radiating more of His great light.
• In Job, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible, the Sun is used as a picture of the might and radiance of a greater power still—our God. In chapter 37 we read: Now no one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean. Out of the north he comes in golden splendor; God comes in awesome majesty. The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power. (vv. 21–23)
• THAT YOU MAY BE BLAMELESS AND INNOCENT, CHILDREN OF GOD WITHOUT BLEMISH IN THE MIDST OF A CROOKED AND TWISTED GENERATION, AMONG WHOM YOU SHINE AS LIGHTS IN THE WORLD, HOLDING FAST TO THE WORD OF LIFE. —PHILIPPIANS 2:15–16 (ESV)
• For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Cor. 4:6–7)
• If the power of the stars is hard to fathom, how much more so is the power of the One who holds them in place beyond our understanding. If His are the arms that are holding you now, rest … and trust. You are in good hands.
• For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth … and in him all things hold together. (Col. 1:16–17)
• Is it just possible that our quest to search out something so much greater than ourselves is actually the heart cry of those who realize they are incomplete in and of themselves?
• Yet for all our straining to see what God has made, He will never have to so much as squint to see you and me. Though high above the heavens, and capable of measuring the entirety of space with the breadth of His fingers, God has no trouble seeing you.