The Infinite Fits in the Finite

I’m not very good at riding buses. Too often, I confidently board the one that takes me in the wrong direction or leaves me at an incorrect stop. Worse, I miss the ones that could save me hours of walking and waiting. I have too many memories of traversing strange places at unusual hours, hoping and praying that I’m on the correct route home.

Perhaps more familiar is the feeling that we have taken the wrong path in our own lives. Maybe we feel as Moses did, living as a stranger in a strange land (Exodus 2:22). We practice our religion, pray, and try to improve. But for all our efforts, sometimes a peculiar wistfulness for different circumstances, a more ideal present, presses into our hearts. We press forward, but some days may require more effort than we can muster. As eternally present as Christ is in our lives, there may be days when we don’t feel it.

There could be many reasons we feel lost in life. I think of Christ as a figure that can feel deeply out of place in this world. He doesn’t seem to fit into small talk or taxes or carpools to Anchorage. He transcends (yet still cares about) dying phone batteries and road rage and those inevitable five pounds gained after Christmas. And, because our Savior is so everlastingly beyond our perception of normal, how can we keep our progress? How can we squeeze this infinite being, this infinite salvation, into a finite space? How can the sacrifice of our best beloved, our greatest friend, and our only hope, fit inside the quote on a coffee mug, the tag on the inside of a shirt, a quickly passed billboard? Where is the reality in an unfathomably happy ending?

Goethe proposed that “few people have the imagination for reality.” My own grandmother, growing up a few miles from Germany’s concentration camps, almost could not believe the horror of the Holocaust. It seemed too unlike her little village, too unworldly to have fit in this world.

Likewise, we deal with inconceivable circumstances regularly. Abuse, loneliness, health diagnoses, breakups, and the deaths of loved ones may seem remote--but happen daily. The impossible has a strange routine of being possible and entirely inevitable.

Perhaps that is where we develop faith. In the wake of the impossible, we come to see that nothing is as we perceive it. All things are changeable. In the midst of our darkest, shakiest storms, we choose to stand on the unmoving rock of Christ. We choose to believe that we can become His.

This process of becoming may begin with the belief that we are incapable of change but end with us feeling like play-doh in God’s hands. We, who were hard-hearted, faithless and unmotivated, become compassionate, inspired, and hopeful. In fact, this change is unavoidable when we follow Christ’s path in the way He wants us to.

How amazing that transformation is. God’s genius has shaped us from a seed into a sprout, a cell into a self, and a seeker into a seer. He calls us home, gives us experiences to wrestle with, and watches as we steadily become strong enough to bear the holiness of His presence. It is a joy, an opportunity, almost too great to be understood.

So what do we do? How do we stay clean a little longer, learn to naturally see Christ in everyday life, and prepare for the impossible? Faith.

There you have it, folks—the ultimate magic trick with a very predictable ending.

Faith is the key to imagining a life greater than we see. Faith is the hope that moves us forward, no matter how dark the path. Faith is what protects us from the stabbing lies Satan maliciously and meticulously thrusts at us. Through faith, all things are possible.

Go, then, and have faith. Pray for faith, believing that you can receive. Recognize and reward yourself for the faith you have. And humbly, joyfully act on it. Through this faith, you will not only reap the rewards of joy in the next life, but also in this life. Such blessings cannot be kept from you. As the psalmist put it, “My heart is smitten…But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever…Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come” (Psalms 102:4, 12-13).

Mariah Fry is an eager English student with aspirations to graduate from Brigham Young University in 2024. She grew up in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and relishes any chance to be with the people who have made her community a home. Mariah is honored to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.