Greenland Is Not That Big
The anchor verses are 2 Kings 6:17 · 2 Chronicles 16:9 (NIV).
In 1569 a Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator published a way of drawing the world on a flat sheet.
His projection preserves local angles. A straight line on it represents a constant compass bearing, which made it useful for navigation. That route is not necessarily the shortest way across the globe.
The price is size. Areas farther from the equator are enlarged more. Greenland can look comparable to Africa, although Africa is roughly fourteen times larger.
The map is doing one job well while giving a misleading impression of something else. Choosing a projection means deciding which properties the map needs to preserve.
That does not make maps useless. It makes their purpose worth knowing.
It also leaves me thinking about the pictures I carry in my head.
The comparison has limits. A human life does not follow a cartographic formula. But attention can give one part of a story more room than the rest.
There is a scene in 2 Kings where a young man wakes up and finds the city surrounded. Horses, chariots, an army sent to collect one prophet. He is not imagining it. The army is there.
Elisha tells him not to be afraid and says that those with them are more than those against them. Then he prays: Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see.
Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
2 Kings 6:17, NIV, excerpts.
The threat is real. The servant is enabled to see that the threat is not the whole scene. Elisha’s prayer does not require him to pretend the army is absent.
In 2 Chronicles, Hanani confronts King Asa about relying on the king of Aram rather than on the LORD. Within that rebuke comes this line:
For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth.
2 Chronicles 16:9, NIV, opening excerpt. The sentence continues by describing GOD strengthening those whose hearts are fully committed to HIM.
This is a call to trust, spoken to a ruler whose judgment is being challenged. Asa responds with anger rather than receiving the correction.
I want to keep that setting in view. The verse does more than offer a comforting image of GOD looking across the world. It asks something of the person being addressed.
Am I willing to have my understanding corrected?
It does leave me thinking about how confidently I have read a picture I did not draw.
Somebody reading this may recognise the way one thing can fill the whole frame.
A remark from a decade ago that occupies more of your week than the people you live with. A single failure that takes up more room in your account of yourself than twenty years of ordinary faithfulness. It has occupied the foreground for so long that it feels like the whole account. That does not mean the hurt was small or that you ought to have recovered by now.
And something else that matters may have become harder to see. Somebody's steady kindness. A decision that was right and cost you. The long ordinary stretch of a marriage.
I cannot tell somebody else how large their grief should be. Nor does this passage promise that every danger disappears when we pray.
But I can ask what else belongs in the picture. I can listen to someone who sees a part I have missed. I can bring my account of myself into prayer without insisting that it is complete.
A map can be compared with other maps and with the ground itself. We, too, can receive correction without pretending to know everything.
The servant’s fear was not the whole scene. Asa’s confidence was not the whole truth.
Both readings give me a reason to loosen my grip on the first picture I see.
Open my eyes, LORD. Help me attend to what I have missed.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one whose attention has been held by one painful thing, and who needs company in seeing what else remains.
🙏 To the teacher helping a student understand what a map shows and what it cannot.
🙏 To the person on the other side of the world whose life deserves our attention even when it feels far away.
🙏 To the one whose steady faithfulness has gone unregistered by everybody including themselves.
Grace and Peace.
Sources: Esri, Mercator projection documentation · Reuters, The true size of Africa · 2 Kings 6 (NIV) · 2 Chronicles 16 (NIV). Scripture quotations: New International Version (NIV); excerpts identified above.
Today’s Sabbath: A Command to Stop
A reflection on rest, dignity, and making room for others to stop.