Big and Small
Before we dive into the words for today, if you’ve found this series interesting and would enjoy conversation around the messages and/or meditations, please reply to this email. We are going to have a Zoom weekly on Wednesday evenings for an hour. No, you do not have to have read the book. We will discuss parts of the book, messages, and writings. We will create the Zoom group based on replies to this email.
It’s so big. And so small. And we are right in the middle of it all.
“We are in the middle of it all, with a human being (roughly a meter tall on average, ids included) halfway between the largest size we can comprehend, the width of the known universe, and the smallest size discovered thus far in the universe.” (Bell, 50)
Isn’t that fascinating? We are in the middle. We are a part of a whole. And there is such beauty in embracing the whole.
Rob Bell, in What We Talk About When We Talk About God, speaks about holism. It’s the idea that things cannot be fully understood when separated from the larger picture. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We often approach our lives in fragments—compartmentalizing work, faith, family, and health—as if each can be isolated, neatly arranged in boxes. But life isn’t like that, is it? Like the tomato plant, everything intertwines.
I think of the stories we carry, the pieces of our lives that seem disconnected—some joyful, others painful. We may look at one season of our lives and say, “This part was good,” or “That sucked.” But what if those fragments, those moments we’ve labeled, aren’t meant to be seen as separate? What if they come together to create something beautiful, something whole?
The story of God, too, can feel fragmented. We have our favorite verses, our go-to promises, and then the parts we don’t talk about much—the confusing, uncomfortable passages. It’s tempting to pick and choose what resonates and leave the rest. But God, in all God’s fullness, invites us into something bigger. The messy, the mysterious, the parts we don’t understand—they are part of the whole story, too. The God we talk about is a God of wholeness.
In the practice of holism, we recognize that we are deeply interconnected—our faith, our relationships, our world. The trees, the oceans, our bodies, the stars, and yes, even our struggles and joys, all contribute to something larger than ourselves. We aren’t just individuals moving through life in isolation, but participants in a vast, interconnected reality.
When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it’s a holistic invitation. It’s not about fulfilling one duty to our neighbor in one moment and moving on. It’s a reminder that love permeates everything—how we treat ourselves, others, and even how we see God. Holism means acknowledging that when we care for another, we care for the divine spark within them, and in turn, ourselves.
Holism and Halloween.
Yeah – the two go together.
In four weeks, thousands of people will gather at LNHS parking lot to celebrate the day of Halloween with their families, all sponsored by West.
Want to know something interesting?
Yesterday, we put out an ask for folks to help with the disaster response by taking supplies to the needed areas.
We sent it to EVERYONE we have a phone number for. That means if they came to our Halloween event the past few years, they got the ask.
Over half the folks that replied were from that pool of people.
They don’t worship at West in an ongoing manner.
IDK if they worship at West at all. But they come to the Halloween event.
AND – they were FIRST to offer to help bring light to the world. To help the hurting.
That is holism. We are part of a whole. And even if we don’t “do things the same” – etc., when it matters, we unite.
With that being said, to make Halloween happen – WE NEED YOU! Please dig a little deeper this month – purchase for Halloween and the Disaster Response.