Unimaginable God

'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. '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)

This morning immediately following church, a small group was sitting around chatting and we ended up in a grand theological discussion. I generally enjoy those a lot, because ... well, I always have plenty to say! (stop giggling)

I finally pulled myself away from the discussion and headed home, but not without millions of words, thoughts, phrases, images, and other pithy ideas roiling around my brain.

I began thinking about the limits that we place on God. Oh, this is nothing new, but it is something that we tend to do without even realizing it. We limit the scriptures even with our very basic knowledge of those words.

We place God in linear time because that's how we live our lives. Yet God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He was, He is and He is to come. Every moment in time IS to God. He doesn't move from one point in time (history) through the present to the future. He actually IS in every moment that we perceive in time.

Once we begin to allow God to be bigger than what we can understand, we then recognize that we are only seeing a minuscule portion of His presence on earth.

I love the Lord's response to Job in Job 38:

"Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2)

Then He goes on to question Job as to Job's whereabouts during the creation of the world and his understanding of how things work in the world. A God that created everything that is seen and unseen and Who intimately knows the moment a mountain goat gives birth or a doe bears her fawn, Who created the animals that run and the birds that fly, Who counts the hairs on our head and names the stars in the sky. This is the God who is bigger than we can imagine.

He is the God who can wait patiently while his children come to accept Him and will love us whether or not we are paying attention to Him. This is the God who knows us intimately, yet gives us the freedom of choice in everything we do. He is big enough to know all of these things in a way that we can not fathom.

Theologians and scholars have worked for centuries to understand and explain how God works among us, yet they are no closer today to that understanding than they ever were. God is too big for that.

When I find myself limiting God to my understanding, I have to stop myself and allow Him to be bigger than anything I could ever begin to imagine. He is God. He is.