Zechariah 12:1-5: in context

Zechariah opens a prophecy with a description of the God who speaks it, and the description holds together two things we might keep apart. This is the word of the LORD, he says, who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him. The same God whose greatness spans the cosmos, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth, is the one who forms the human spirit within each person. His vastness and his intimacy are named in a single breath.

The two halves of this description are worth holding together. On one side is God's cosmic greatness: he stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, the maker of all that is vast and immense. On the other side is his intimate nearness: he forms the spirit of man within him, the maker of each human inner being, the one who fashions the spirit inside each person. The God of the galaxies is the God who formed your spirit within you. His greatness does not make him distant from the small and inward; the same hand that stretched the heavens formed the human heart. Vastness and intimacy meet in one God. This corrects two errors we can fall into. One is to think of God as so great and cosmic that he is distant from us, uninterested in the small details of a single human spirit; a God who made the galaxies, we imagine, can hardly be concerned with me. The other is to make God so intimate and personal that we lose sight of his greatness, shrinking him to a comfortable companion. This description holds both: God is vast beyond comprehension, and he is the intimate maker of your inner being. You formed my inmost parts, the psalmist says; you knit me together in my mother's womb. The God who stretched the heavens is the God who formed my spirit within me, who knows me from the inside. This gives us both awe and comfort. Awe, because the God we deal with is the one who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth, of unsearchable greatness. And comfort, because this same great God is the one who formed our spirit within us, who is not distant from our inner life but is its very maker, near to us, knowing us from within. The everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, Isaiah says, whose understanding is unsearchable; and this same God formed our inner being and knows it intimately. This calls us to hold God's greatness and his nearness together. We do not deal with a distant cosmic force uninterested in us, nor with a small and comfortable companion, but with the God who stretches out the heavens and forms the human spirit within, vast beyond comprehension and yet the intimate maker of our inner being. In him we live and move and have our being; the God of the heavens is the God who formed our spirit, near to us and knowing us, even as he is great beyond all we can grasp.

Do I think of God either as so vast and cosmic that he is distant from the details of my inner life, or as so intimate that I lose sight of his greatness, and can the description of the God who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth, and also forms the spirit of man within him, teach me to hold his greatness and his nearness together, so that I approach with awe the God of unsearchable vastness who is yet the intimate maker of my own spirit, near to me and knowing me from within?