admit to the moments--moments of spiritual malaise when my soul feels vacuumed of everything except earthiness; when the spiritual feels more chemical than empyreal; and when the words of T. S. Eliot--"We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw"--sum up my religious experience quite accurately.

We all (I assume) have hobbled through such times when the contrast between what we are and should be crushes faith; if not so much in God but in the hope of ever seeing Him, except maybe from a distance, on a vast plain, along with the rest of Gog and Magog (Rev. 20:8).

Again and again, though, a thought comes to my rescue, a revealed truth that better than anything else frees me from the shackles of self.

It starts with John, who, talking about Jesus, says: "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). Without Jesus nothing made was made; not time, not space, not even the vibrating strings that some scientists now theorize compose all matter (a string is to the size of a proton as a proton is to the solar system). Galaxies, goats, black holes, water, dark matter, antimatter, electromagnetism, DNA, the inverse square law, square roots, even the square itself--all things "were made by him," at least all things that "were made," and what existing wasn't made except God?

Then I contrast this thought, that of Jesus having made "all things," with another revealed truth: "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ" (Matt. 1:16).

Think about it: the power that created "all things," the universe, that power "shrank down" and became a human being; and not just any human being--but Jesus of Nazareth? Come on! The Jesus we see in the Gospels, hungry, weeping, scorned, and finally crucified, was the Creator of the universe, the one without whom "was not any thing made that was made"? Who can grasp this? The idea is so audacious, so outlandish that it defies the imagination (which just shows how limited imaginations are). How dare we think that as human beings we could be so worthwhile in the eyes of God that He would do this for us?

A philosopher once asked, "Is the universe friendly?" If a pure chance creation, then no--it's hostile, filled with cold and uncaring laws that never apologize, that never listen to a child's cry or a parent's plea. But if, as the Bible teaches, this universe was created by a God who has linked Himself to us in such an intimate way, who has bridged the vast gulf between us and Him through the agony of the cross, then the answer is yes, the universe is friendly beyond anything rationality can comprehend.

There's something about that thought; that of the Creator of the universe coming down, not just into humanity, but as Jesus, with the predetermined plan (Rev. 13:8) to die for our sins. That idea overwhelms all others; it becomes the focus, the pivot point through which everything else should be viewed, judged, and understood. The cross reconfigures reality, rewrites axioms, changes equations. General relativity shows that gravity, which pervades the whole universe, is nothing but matter bending space and time; the cross shows that they're bent into the shape of a loving, longing smile.

If you believe that the Creator of the universe, the One who made "everything that was made," morphed into Jesus of Nazareth and freely offered Himself to die a cruel death all in order to give us eternal life . . . what else matters? What else could matter? Everything is kind of swept away, kind of anyway . . . including my own sense of spiritual failure. Before the cross, and the incredible view of reality it offers, even I, hollow man that I am, rejoice in a hope that's still hard for me to understand; a hope that I have to take on faith, for nothing else can reach far enough to grasp it.

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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide.