Friday, 8/7/15
Moses asked if any other people had their god as close to
them as our God is to us. That gives rise to the question of how close is our God to
us. In the “Acts of the Apostles” we read, “He is not far from any of us, since
in him we live and move, and have our being.” But even so, how well do we know
him?
A lady told me that her six-year-old grandson was going to
come to me, asking what God is really like, and I have been thinking about what
I might tell him.
Artists in the Middle Ages just pictured God as a loving
grandfather, but will the little boy be happy picturing God that way?
St. John wrote, “All
things came to be though him, and without him nothing was made.” That means
that everything in Nature is modeled after him. That is a help in picturing God
when we imagine that the blue of the sky and the laughter of infants are
modeled after him.
But it is harder to get a mental image of God when we get
scientific. Like, it doesn’t give us a clear picture of God when we learn that each
infant’s body, modeled after God, is composed of millions of cells. It gets
less clear when we start picturing each of those million cells as it carries
out its own special function.
Wooh, wooh! That is too complicated.
Did your father ever take you on his knee, and then talk
with you? I have the warmest memories of that happening with me when I was little. For getting an
image of God I like combining that memory with Jesus telling us to call God
“Our Father.”
I find that the
best way for me to picture God is to close my eyes, and to relax, feeling how
he is holding me and listening to what I say.
No comments:
Post a Comment