How do we describe the indescribable? How do you imagine God?
My grandmother told me that if I said a swear word…my jaw would freeze closed forever. Well, I noticed that occasionally when someone would say the d…..word nothing happened to their jaw!! One day I hid myself in the closet and said that dreadful word…..guess what? Nothing happened to my jaw. This made me realize that my grandmother’s image of God was not the same as the “real” God.
God is a mystery. As mere humans we will never understand the inscrutable mystery of God; his being or his nature. And yet the only way we have of speaking about God is through human language. God is always more than words can describe. Even the language found in the Bible, is a human expression.
God has many names or metaphors in Scripture. He is a shepherd, a rock, a husband, a father etc. All Biblical images of God are a lens through which we gain some new insight of God. No one lens or image is God. Rather it is a view of God, an angle of vision on God.
The Bible tells us that no one has ever seen God ……yet we have “seen” him in Jesus. He chose to expose himself to the world of his creation in order to draw us near to him.
However, before the Messiah came, God revealed himself through images and word pictures. These images give us humans some understanding of his character. God is known by his attributes.
In this next series of short Abidelines, I will focus on some of the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture.
Hopefully this brief study will reveal more of God’s character and the great love that our Creator shows to all humanity.
God is always more than anything that can be said about him. He transcends all languages, and ideologies. God is beyond all genders, metaphors, and sacred texts. God defies all forms of packaging. This realization develops a healthy sense of wonder about God.
AbideLines 