God Is God

Hello, friends.

It’s been a long and painful week for the students and faculty where I teach. Midweek, a student of ours passed away suddenly and very tragically. This sits heavily on our minds and hearts – even those of us who didn’t know her very well or at all.

There are things we just can’t understand this side of heaven.

I have such a longing to share the heart of Christ with everyone I can. I know it’s been an underlying theme of my blog – and more prominent these last few days. It seems the more painful things get, the more I want to point the broken hearts around me to the only One who can heal.

Today, I’m thinking about how we think of God. I’ve talked a lot about how He feels about us. But I also question our sometimes muddled views of Him. Many tend to limit God, humanizing Him until they lose all perception of divinity. Others say He can’t make sense therefore He can’t exist.

But we will not fully understand God and we shouldn’t try. Why can’t we allow God to be God and be ok with mysteries that may or may not be revealed?

We know God has emotions. We certainly know Jesus felt the whole gamut of human emotion when He walked this earth – though He remained sinless until taking our sins on Himself. But it’s shaky territory to assign God the frailty of feelings in a way that compromises His strength.

For example, people who are not close to their earthly fathers usually have a hard time drawing near to God. Their view of fatherhood is different from those of us who have grown up with great dads. It makes sense then that their breakthrough is in coming to the realization that God will not abandon or abuse them the way their fathers did. It’s in the understanding that God is not human and therefore, will not love them like a human.

Whether we have wonderful earthly fathers or not, we may all need to keep this truth in mind from time to time. Do not assume God feels about you or looks at you the way anyone else in your life does. Keep vigilant here. We all do this – and only proper perspective will set us free. What a blessing to have God’s Word. What a blessing to have some understanding of God because He revealed Himself to us. But even the Bible assures us that some things cannot be understood.

Let’s not look at God as anyone other than God. Yes, His love for us runs wild. Yes, He is capable of emotion. Yes, that makes Him all the more relatable. But He is also capable of things we will not understand – and He lives outside the constraints of man. God isn’t limited by time or space. God isn’t limited in any way we are. This should bring us comfort and strength when life falls outside the grasp of comprehension. Isn’t it comforting to know there’s a Father in heaven holding all of this together? I’ll sleep better tonight with that thought resting on my heart.

I hope you do too.

Friends, when life is heavy, when life is good, when life is confusing and consuming, and even when life makes sense, God alone has the bigger picture…

and we really wouldn’t want it any other way.

Therein lies our peace. Thanks be to God.