Pushing The Limits (Psalm 119:96)

I’ve spent much of my professional life looking down through a microscope. But when I visited Dubai, I found myself looking in the opposite direction.

Way up!

The Burj Khalifa stands 2,717 feet tall, the tallest building in the world. Standing beneath it, I was amazed by its sheer height and the engineering required to build it. But even then, plans were underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for an even taller skyscraper, exceeding 3,280 feet!

That got me wondering. Is there a limit to how high we can build? Apparently, there’s no single absolute height limit. But the taller a building gets, the more difficult it becomes to support its weight, withstand the wind, and transport people to the upper floors. Eventually, the engineering challenges and costs may become impractical.

It reminded me of something from my years studying pathology. There’s a physical limit to what a conventional light microscope can resolve because of the wavelength of visible light. So we developed electron microscopes to see structures far smaller than light microscopy allows. But we didn’t stop there! Today, techniques such as scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy allow us to examine individual atoms.

I found the contrast fascinating. For years, I’d been looking at smaller and smaller structures. Now I was standing beneath a building that challenged the limits of how high we could build. How small can we see? How high can we build? Apparently, we’re not satisfied with either answer!

I think that’s one of the wonderful things about human curiosity. God has given us remarkable minds, and I still get excited by what we can discover and accomplish.

But the psalmist made an interesting observation thousands of years ago:

I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.
Psalm 119:96 (ESV)

Think about that. Every human achievement has its limits, even if we haven’t discovered them yet. Today’s technological breakthrough may become tomorrow’s obsolete invention. But God’s Word is different. Its wisdom never becomes obsolete. There is no discovery that will make it irrelevant, no advancement that will surpass it.

We may never stop pushing the limits of human achievement. But we’ll never outgrow our need for God’s Word.

Love and trust in the Lord; seek His will in your life.

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