02/10/2017
What do we imagine our faith to be? How great and unbound can we dream that God is? What binds us to the commonplace, and the everyday? It isn't God, or faith, but our own perception of their combined greatness and possibility. Oswald Chambers touched on this when he wrote these words…. "Is your imagination looking in the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in the darkness."
What can we do to overcome our lack of imagination? When I was a boy, my friends and I enjoyed taking our sleeping bags into a large open meadow where we would sleep under the stars. We would lay on our backs and talk into the night about the enormity of the universe, and search the summer sky hoping we would be the first to see a shooting star. There was certain mystery and awe to those nights that was bound only by our ability to squint and see the glimmer of a star that had been just beyond our view a few moments before. We all knew that if we weren't constrained by human eyes that we could see stars as far as forever. This is how we should imagine God, and anticipate our own faith to be… unconstrained.
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.”
Isaiah 40:26 ESV
I am an adult now, and yet I still long for those warm summer nights and the wonder of a boy. However, because of those majestic nights, I never doubt the ability of God to answer my prayers, nor do I ever question my unwavering faith in him. My only handicap is that my eyesight isn't as keen, and that these aging eyes are limited in how far they can see... and how narrow I can squint them.
It is impossible to put into finite words the greatness of God. It has been attempted, but always falls back on a description that is more mystical and vague than precise. Hagar, the handmaiden of Sarai tried to describe God in these words...
“So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, "You are a God of seeing," for she said, "Truly here I have seen him who looks after me."”
Genesis 16:13 ESV
And, God described Himself in this way...
“God said to Moses, “I am who I am." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel: ' I am has sent me to you.'"”
Exodus 3:14 ESV
As for our faith, we can do no better as we attempt to describe it because it is tied to what, and who, God is, and in that, we already know there is no end.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
Hebrews 11:1-3 ESV
So the greatness of God, and our faith in Him can only be imagined, or dreamed of. The enormity of these two is beyond our ability to fathom. Even to this day our attempts fall short and lean heavily into the abstract. I will close this morning's thought with an excerpt from Rick Bragg who wrote a description of faith in Appalachian Alabama by describing it in this way...
"This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven." - Rick Bragg
Even Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was unable to imagine God and faith without reverting to Isaiah 40:26 ESV
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.”
Isaiah 40:26
Prayer:
Father, give my old eyes a glimmer of you in the night sky. Let my imagination of who you are allow me to peer into the darkness and find hope in knowing you, even in a single star, that by squinting, I can barely see. Lord, give me the faith to know that there is another... and another... just beyond my ability to focus, and allow me to realize that even those unseen and far off points of faith are viewed clearly by your eye... and have a number... and a name.
Holy Father, as I hold my grandchildren, let me impart to them my belief in those distant points of faith. Let me, on a summer night, show them your grandeur peaking from the floor of heaven, so that they too can begin their journey towards you by lifting up their eyes... even as I whisper to them while they gaze into the floor of heaven, let them know by faith that they are seeing you. Then, if by chance, they should ask "Andad, can you actually see God?" I can answer, "I am."
“God is able to do far more than we could ever ask for or imagine. He does everything by his power that is working in us. Give him glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. Give him glory through all time and for ever and ever. Amen.”
Ephesians 3:20-21 NIRV
Rich Forbes