Daily Readings, August 9, 2004

Today's Readings

There are a lot of visions of God in the Bible. Many of them, like the one in today's reading from Ezekiel, are filled with light and fury, like something out of the X-Files or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And then some, like the time God was in the whisper, rather than the storm and tumult.

God is magnificent. He is truly beyond our ability to comprehend...too big and too multi-dimensional for us to fit in our minds. One of the reasons that there are so many arguments about God is that we tend to take our own view, which could be true, but is almost definitely not complete, and use it to discredit the views of others. The bottom line is that we just don't know. We are seeing God from around the corner, and anyone who has gone around the corner cannot come back to validate our views.

So we have a set of vague glimpses of God.

So which is He? Is He the God of special effects and dazzling light shows or the God or a quiet springtime shower in the wooded glade? Is He the God of the roaring surf or the surreal quiet of a heavy snow storm in the woods? Is He the God of love, a warm Daddy who wants us to sit in His lap or is He the angry and jealous God who demands our attention?

Maybe He is none of these things, or all of them.

When Moses gave the law to the people, one of the things he was recorded as having said is that you are supposed to talk about these things when you get up or sit down or go in or go out, in short, we are supposed to think about them and talk about them, because they are supposed to matter. And each of us will see God from our own unique position in the world. I have often thought that our vision of God will drive the type of person we become as we go through time.

A Bible teacher that I sometimes listen to is fond of quoting Aslan the lion from C. S. Lewis. Aslan is asked by one of the other characters if he is safe. "No," he answers, "but I am good."

God is not safe. But He is good. And that is a scary thing for us because we are not good. We try and maybe have good intentions, but we are also flawed, and the goodness that we seem to have a firm hold on one second, has turned to vapor by the next. So the comtemplation of God...His sheer size and goodness...ought to be intimidating. He is like nothing we have ever seen.

But in the end, when we need him, when our hearts are broken and it feels that we will explode if we go on one more step, He will be there. We may not see it at the time. We may be blinded by our anguish or worry or pain or anger, but He is there, never leaving us alone. And He loves us, as He has told us.

So maybe it doesn't matter if He is the God of special effects or the God of a whisper, as long as He is our God and we are His people.