God is always Oversampling.
God, who does more "than all that we ask or think" (Eph 3:20), sees the big picture in ways that can be compared to new technologies.
Have you considered the switch to 4K yet? Some would say that we should be shooting everything in the new format simply because of "oversampling." What is oversampling? It's the ability to remove an HD piece of a 4K image seamlessly with no loss. That's because 4K is so much bigger than the current 1080 standard. (Specifically it's 4,096 by 2,160, which means you can get four standard HD frames from one image.)
If we begin to think in a spiritual way, God is actually doing this on a much bigger scale. Think of us as living in standard definition, while God sees us in 12K (well, actually it's even bigger). He is working across such a larger image than we could even understand. He sees into the areas that we can't. Consider Isaiah's words:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." - Isaiah 55:8-9
A great way to see this in action is in the Book of Acts. As we read through about 60 years of the early church's history, we can catch little glimpses of how God's oversampling works. In Chapter 8, for example, we find how God is moving to change a disciple's travels that will alter the big picture. The story is found in Acts 8:26-40. Philip is the disciple and he's busy proclaiming the Gospel to the Samaritans when God directs him to the Gaza road. God leads him to go up to a royal official's chariot.
What Philip doesn't know is that, at that very moment, the Ethiopian official, who was a eunuch, is reading his Bible scroll on the journey home from Jerusalem. The story doesn't tell us a lot about why this official was in Israel. Perhaps he was there on business or maybe he was on some kind of spiritual pilgrimage. What is clear is that there was something about the God of the Jews that intrigued him; so much so, that he would obtain a scroll of Isaiah. In those days a Torah scroll (Genesis- Deuteronomy) would cost nearly a year's wages.
So, we find this Royal Ethiopian official trying to wrap his head around the writings of the prophet Isaiah on the trip back. It seems like he's getting a little frustrated when Philip comes up next to him. Just when the man needs a good Bible study, a preacher comes into the scene. That's God working in the big picture. Can you see it? God is directing Philip to just the right spot at just the right time. Philip wasn't camped out waiting. This all happens along the way.
The official invites Philip into the chariot and: “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?'”(Acts 8:35-36) We don't know what follows in the life of the Ethiopian eunuch but there is a great tradition of Christianity in that region that dates back to the first century. We can assume that this man, and others, brought the Gospel to that country and affected the big picture.
In the very next chapter, Acts 9, we meet Saul who is persecuting Christians until God completely changes his framework. In a huge oversampling moment, Jesus appears to Saul and he transforms from persecutor to preacher. With an eye on the big picture, we see Saul becomes Paul, the man responsible for writing most of New Testament; the man who traveled thousands of miles to bring the message of Jesus to Europe. I don't think that it's too big of a stretch to say that, many of us are Christians today because of the HD moment that Paul has on a different desert road.
I would encourage you to read through the book of Acts with that eye on the big picture. Notice how God moves His followers into just the right situations to change whole cities and regions. And because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”(Hebrews 13:8), we believe God is still working in the big picture.
Can you think of times when you saw God at work in the big picture? Maybe it was in the form of something we thought was a negative? Perhaps you've experienced, as I have, God closing a door on something. Later you found out that it would not have been the right thing for you. That's God at work. That's Him oversampling. Spend a little time today thanking Him for seeing so much more than you ever could.
