Blog # 471 God

Blog # 471    God

          Wherever the sun is shining,  wherever there is a stone, wherever a flower, a drop of water, or  a human tear, God is present.

            We use the word present both of God and others.  In both instances it means something similar and yet something different. We know and are present to others beginning with our five senses.  God, the Creator of all, is present to all of creation in a way that is unique to God and mysterious to us, totally beyond  our limited human comprehension.

              Everything we say or think of God falls short of the whole truth about God.  The whole truth about God is absolutely beyond anything we might say or think.  Few people seem to realize this and we find ourselves speaking and thinking about God almost as though God were just better than  we rather than absolutely different.  Understand just a little of that statement and we begin to realize how foolish it is for anyone to say there is no God.  Such a person does not know what he or she is talking about, or what he or she is saying.

                Analogies sometimes help but they do not solve the problem.  You may have a quart of water from the ocean in a jar, but you do not have the ocean there. If someone were to ask you of the photo you keep in your wallet who is that (sic)?, you have no problem saying she is my sister.  It is a  photo of your sister all right, and  no one else, that is true.  But the photo , like all photos, is paper, and your sister is a living woman.  All we think or speak of God is by way of analogy.

                It a case of something being similar yet different on a limited scale, when we think and speak of God there is a limited similarity between our thoughts and words and the total truth about God, but the difference is absolute, without limit.  Words like awesome, majestic, stunning, adorable, generous, kind, and great are all words we could be comfortable with  in speaking and thinking of God. Yet not one of them or all of them together express the solution to the problem we have by the very nature of our limited human thinking and speaking of God.  If there is a solution God alone would  know it.

                  Because God is kind, generous and all those words we use when we try on our own to think or speak of God,  God has solved the problem for us in Jesus.  In Jesus, by faith, we see God walking, hear God speaking, share God's love in human circumstances and in particular times and places.  Jesus claims this for Himself on behalf of all people down to the very end of the world.  "No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only son, ever at the Father's side, who has revealed Him." (Jn. 1:18. Also (Jn.3: 32; Jn. 6: 46.  And: "I tell you what I have seen in the Father's presence." (Jn. 8 :38).  "Lord", Philip said to Jesus,  " Show us the Father and that will be enough for us."  "Philip", Jesus replied, after I have been with you all this time, you still do not know me?   Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."  (Jn. 14: 8,).   "If you really  knew me, you would know the Father also". (Jn.14: 7; Jn. 8: 19). "The Father and I are one. (Jn. 10 30).

              Jesus insists there is but  one God.  Yet Jesus speaks of God as Father. Jesus Himself claims to be God.  Jesus speaks of sending the Holy Spirit from Heaven, and the Holy Spirit as divine.  In what Jesus tells us of the Father, Himself, and the Holy Spirit being truly God, and in His clear proclamation of one God the Creator of all that exists, we have a supernatural mystery clearly   beyond our limited human  understanding.

               We believe, that is, we know, by faith the Father is God,  The Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.  We believe, that is, we know, by faith there is but one God. We know this now, by faith.  After judgment our knowledge will be "face to face".  But now, and then, always and everywhere, the one Eternal God, Father Creator, Son Redeemer, and Holy Spirit Sanctifier, awesome beyond thoughts and words, is intimately and personally close to us through faith in love. The model of our love for God is the perfect total unconditional human obedient love of Jesus on the Cross. His trust there was unconditional.  His  love there was total.

                   In response to the words of Jesus: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me", ( Jn. 14:10) and His identification of our union with Him as a union of branches on a vine(Jn. 15:5) , here is a short prayer inviting God to keep us mindful of one of the gifts that comes to us in Baptism.
                                Live, my Triune God, so live in me,
                                that all I do be done by Thee,
                                that all I think and all I say be
                                Thy thoughts and words today.

                              

           


















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