Over lunch yesterday I shared an engaging conversation about the nature and character of God. It struck me that no matter how abundant the evidence or plain the facts, at some point faith is required. God is eternal and infinite in love, wisdom, grace, and goodness. We humans are finite, locked within time, and our perspective is shockingly limited. In reaching for better understanding of God and how He operates (who does not share our thoughts, nor are His ways like ours) we cobble together examples which are woefully inadequate using words which cannot do justice to God's reality. At a funeral or memorial service it is impossible to convey the impact of a single life of a brief span of time: how can we explain eternity or He who inhabits it?
Because God has graciously revealed Himself through the Word and the person of Jesus Christ we can know Who we worship. But let us not make the mistake that God is like us any more than a created thing resembles the maker. He formed Adam from the dust of the ground yet God always has been! Inventors design and manufacture tools and machines for particular purposes. A mobile phone looks and behaves nothing like those who designed it, operating on electricity rather than being a living, breathing, thinking person. A mop bucket, automobile, shoe, or building bear no resemblance to those who engineered or utilise them. God confronted presumptuous people who assumed He was like them in Psalm 50:19-21: "You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son. 21 These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes."
It is good to recognise God is someone completely foreign and beyond this world. This proves difficult when we use familiar allusions like saying "God the Father." God is a Spirit and does not have a body, but when I think of our heavenly Father and a throne I logically envision something rather based on human anatomy with facial features obscured with white light. Because God is completely beyond human form, this concrete frame of reference is the best we can do because we live in a concrete, physical world. This world, relationships, and created living and non-living things can only hint at the order, glory, love, and wisdom of God. The heavens declare the glory of God but they are not god nor is any created thing worthy of worship.
We cannot comprehend or appreciate the size (big or small) of all God has created, yet by faith we can worship and praise the One God who has created all. Just like fuel for vehicles and battery power for tools or phones runs out, so our understanding has limitations and an end. There are things we will never fully understand but we are enabled and called to worship God according to our level of understanding. It would be silly to allow what we cannot know erode our faith in what and Who we do know. I do not understand how bones form in the womb of a mother, but I know they can and do. We are all walking miracles by the grace of God, the One we celebrate and worship with thanksgiving. As our knowledge of God grows like a baby in the womb, may our praise and gratefulness increase for eternity. God is nothing like us, but He has loved us enough to become one of us to save, transform, and redeem us forever.
Because God has graciously revealed Himself through the Word and the person of Jesus Christ we can know Who we worship. But let us not make the mistake that God is like us any more than a created thing resembles the maker. He formed Adam from the dust of the ground yet God always has been! Inventors design and manufacture tools and machines for particular purposes. A mobile phone looks and behaves nothing like those who designed it, operating on electricity rather than being a living, breathing, thinking person. A mop bucket, automobile, shoe, or building bear no resemblance to those who engineered or utilise them. God confronted presumptuous people who assumed He was like them in Psalm 50:19-21: "You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son. 21 These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes."
It is good to recognise God is someone completely foreign and beyond this world. This proves difficult when we use familiar allusions like saying "God the Father." God is a Spirit and does not have a body, but when I think of our heavenly Father and a throne I logically envision something rather based on human anatomy with facial features obscured with white light. Because God is completely beyond human form, this concrete frame of reference is the best we can do because we live in a concrete, physical world. This world, relationships, and created living and non-living things can only hint at the order, glory, love, and wisdom of God. The heavens declare the glory of God but they are not god nor is any created thing worthy of worship.
We cannot comprehend or appreciate the size (big or small) of all God has created, yet by faith we can worship and praise the One God who has created all. Just like fuel for vehicles and battery power for tools or phones runs out, so our understanding has limitations and an end. There are things we will never fully understand but we are enabled and called to worship God according to our level of understanding. It would be silly to allow what we cannot know erode our faith in what and Who we do know. I do not understand how bones form in the womb of a mother, but I know they can and do. We are all walking miracles by the grace of God, the One we celebrate and worship with thanksgiving. As our knowledge of God grows like a baby in the womb, may our praise and gratefulness increase for eternity. God is nothing like us, but He has loved us enough to become one of us to save, transform, and redeem us forever.
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