The Ridiculous and the Sublime

Ridiculous me

I’m embarrassed. I go to God in prayer and I think about the things I’ve asked for in the last few years and I wonder if my face is turning red with shame. How can I face this big, glorious, all-powerful God who is above and beyond all that exists and who created the universe out of nothing, when my prayers have been focused on the selfish, the trivial, and the mundane for so long?

There are people all over the world who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, who’re living in war zones, who’ve been sold into slavery, who’re being abused and tortured. And I’m begging God to take away the minor annoyances in my life?

How can I be so self-centered after all these years of following Jesus? Doesn’t God have better things to do than to micromanage all my little complaints? I’ve been praying to the sublime about the ridiculous.

(Had to look up the exact meaning of the word sublime. I like Wikipedia’s description the best: “the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.” That’s God.

While dictionary.com defines ridiculous as “causing or worthy of ridicule or derision; absurd; preposterous; laughable,” I’m using it more loosely here to mean trivial. But I imagine that some of my requests could seem absurd or laughable to God compared to the really important issues that He deals with every day.)

My life started falling apart in 2019. The stresses just kept coming until, by the end of 2021, I was pretty well wiped out, physically, mentally, and emotionally. All I could think about, all I could pray about, was how to take the next little baby step. My prayers became self-centered and small.

The healing began in 2022. Today I’m much better than I had been, even though I’m not completely back to “normal.” I can look beyond my self. I can deal with the minor challenges in life without feeling overwhelmed and sending up panicky pleas to God.

I thank Him frequently for this improvement. But as I sit down to pray I’m embarrassed by my immature thoughts and requests over the last few years.

I have to wonder how God sees me. Has He been rolling His eyes and sighing with impatience every time I’ve prayed about the problems that a really big God might consider ridiculous? It’s easy to imagine that He might have been. But then I turn to the Bible for a better understanding of who He is.

The depth of God’s compassion

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus encourages His followers to stop focusing on all their physical necessities. Sounds like maybe He’s telling me I shouldn’t be praying the way I have been. But why does He say not to worry? Because He doesn’t care? Because all those things are too small for Him to even think about?

No. He tells us to relax because He’s so deeply concerned about our needs that He’ll provide for them. God feeds the birds of the air. We’re much more valuable than birds. He clothes the lilies of the field. We’re much more precious than lilies.

The spiritual aspect of our lives is far more important than food and clothing, and yet He has so much compassion for our material side that He gladly gives us nourishment and protection. The most sublime Being in the universe really cares about even the most ridiculous things.

Jesus says in Luke 12:7 that the very hairs on our heads are all numbered. That’s not just a specific count that He can learn once and tuck away somewhere in His vast mind while He moves on to more important issues. How many hairs have I lost in the time that it’s taken me to write this article? How many new ones have begun growing in? And God’s keeping track of all of them? How trivial is that?

Jesus’ point isn’t that the God of the universe lets Himself get distracted over unimportant details (like I do). It’s that He knows me so well and loves me so much that He’s fully aware of even the most minute, ever-changing facts about who I am.

Peter writes that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). In God’s eyes, a little thing that we all experience (the ridiculous day) is no different than a span of time that goes well beyond our life expectancy and our comprehension (the sublime thousand years).

According to dictionary.com, either Napoleon or Talleyrand made the famous comment, “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” Quora.com explains the quote as referring to “a sudden negative change in condition.” The fall of the mighty.

But maybe it’s also true in another way. The sublime God, who is great beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation, by His nature is but a step from things that are trivial, absurd, and laughable, things like me and my minor concerns. Not that He could ever fall to my level, but that He chooses to meet me there.

And so I realize that I don’t need to feel ashamed. Yes, my prayers were selfish and mundane. But I’d been battered by so many stresses that my body, mind, and emotions were in a bad place, where the ridiculous overwhelmed me and it took a great effort to catch a glimpse of the sublime.

If God knows the number of hairs on my head at this very moment (oops, there goes another one; now He has to revise His count), then surely He understands my weakness at those times when I can’t see beyond all my little problems. Our sublime God stoops to embrace the ridiculous.