When my younger son told me that the prize for selling at least one item in his school’s fundraiser was a Rubik’s Cube eraser, I wasn’t too excited. I’m not excited by school fundraisers to begin with, though I do take the brochures to work and leave them in the breakroom for my co-workers to browse through. (Throughout the fall months, there is a steady succession of fundraiser brochures for different schools and community groups, often including multiples of the same fundraiser because our department has a lot of parents of school-age kids.)

My son gets a lot of erasers in goodie bags at holidays, and I couldn’t see much reason to be excited about another one. They are bright and colorful and sometimes cute, in every imaginable shape and theme: Christmas trees, smileys, rainbows, basketballs… just take a look at an Oriental Trading catalog to find dozens more. But I’d never seen a Rubik’s Cube eraser. I wondered if it was supposed to go on the end of a pencil or not.

When the fundraiser items arrived today, I found a colorful rubber cube, but it didn’t look a bit like a Rubik’s Cube. And the packing list just called it a “Cube Eraser.” But he was thrilled with it, and promptly asked me to unwrap it so he could take it apart. Take it apart? How do you take an eraser apart? I thought it was just going to look like a puzzle, not actually be one.

He handed me the six pieces, and I realized that it was in fact a puzzle, but unrelated to Rubik’s famous puzzle except for being in the shape of a cube. So I started putting it back together for him, taking advantage of the letters debossed on each side (debossing is the opposite of embossing – the letters are indented instead of raised). But after putting together A, B, C, and D, I found that E and F didn’t fit. I rearranged the first four, and the openings left were very close to E and F – but not quite right.

I began to see why one might confuse it with a Rubik’s Cube. I’m sure there are nearly as many ways to put together the first four sides as there are with a Rubik’s Cube (which can be arranged in approximately 43 quintillion ways), but there are enough to keep one puzzling for quite some time. You get tantalizingly close, but not quite there. Pretty soon you’re back at the beginning, trying to remember if you tried this particular arrangement before.

I looked online to find a picture of the Cube Eraser to include here. And with this picture in front of me, I was able to put the cube back together (though it still took a couple tries to orient the pieces correctly).

I also started wondering if maybe the word Cube in the name had a double meaning – a puzzle for workers in cubicles to play with when they’re tired of whatever work they’re supposed to be doing. One could argue that it was there to use as an eraser, since it is in fact an eraser – or more precisely, six erasers. Though where I work, I can’t think of any use it would have, since virtually all our work is done on the computer, and when a co-worker looked through the office supplies yesterday for a pencil, there were none. (We do use pens and highlighters.)

I have no idea where you can get one, since the one place I found it online says it’s out of stock. But if you happen to have a child doing a fundraiser at school, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get one of these too.

Yesterday the daily Bible reading I receive by email began with Psalm 93. “The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.” A few lines later I read “Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!” That wasn’t the passage I had planned to use with Mighty Majesty (my notes had Psalm 145:12), but I decided the timing made it a good choice.

I found myself wondering, as I read the first two lines, why the phrase “he is robed” was repeated. From what I understand about Hebrew (purely secondhand, from my husband’s studies in seminary), repetition is used to emphasize a point. I can understand using such emphasis on the majesty of God, or His might. But why the emphasis on “he is robed”?

I suppose the best way to understand this would be to learn more about the Hebrew word translated as “robed” and its uses in various contexts. I might be able to figure out something using my husband’s interlinear Bible and Strong’s concordance. But while I can do that reasonably well with Greek words in the New Testament, I find it harder to deal with the Hebrew, where I keep forgetting I have to read from right to left.

In any case, I found myself thinking about the possible significance of the word without having done any word study on it. If this were about a human king being robed with majesty, I would think it might have to do with the exceptional beauty of his garments, or perhaps an oblique hint at the fact that under the robes he is like the rest of us, and it is the robes and the office they signify that set him apart, rather than his own inherent qualities.

But of course with God it is quite the opposite. It is God’s own inherent qualities that set Him apart from us, and any reference to robes is purely metaphorical. To my ears, it sounds strange to emphasize the metaphor, rather than the real majesty with which God is metaphorically robed.

Then I started asking myself, what exactly is majesty? Is that also a metaphor? I associate the word with royalty, with the pomp and riches associated with royalty, and with the sense of grandeur produced by panoramic vistas such as the Grand Canyon, snow-capped mountain ranges, and star-studded skies. (And also by hearing a pipe organ played by a skilled musician in a large and beautiful church.)

God is King, but I’m not sure whether to say that is literally true or metaphorically. He is rich in that He ultimately owns everything, and He is due all the pomp we can imagine and more. But the mental images that come to my mind when I sing hymns about God’s majesty are borrowed from ceremonies involving human kings or other highly placed leaders.

The majesty I see in nature seems to come closest to reflecting God’s majesty without comparison to human monarchs. But even there I am trying to extrapolate from something familiar and more or less tangible (I’ve never actually touched a snow-capped peak, or any of the Grand Canyon past the scenic lookouts designated for tourists, and certainly nothing I see in the night sky – with the exception of the occasional jet plane) to the transcendant and intangible.

Of course that’s true with virtually everything we can think of or say about God. When we say He is mighty, we think of strong people and strong armies and we extrapolate to the idea of a Being of unlimited might. His might is of an altogether different nature, as it requires only His will, while we can exercise power only by means of some tool (whether our own bodies, inanimate objects, or other people).

Perhaps it is that contrast between human characteristics and divine attributes which is at the heart of this Psalm’s message. A web page on the song “Majesty” by Jack Hayford says that “The word majesty describes a reflected part of God’s nature that emphasizes how different our Creator is from us.” Even with human royalty, all the robes and pomp and circumstance are designed to highlight how the king (or queen) is elevated above the common people.

I found this hymn, based (at least in part) on Psalm 93, at this website (which I bookmarked for future searches for hymns based on Scripture passages). I don’t recognize the hymn from singing it in church, but I know the tune Regent Square (best known to many people for the Christmas words more often sung to it: Angels from the Realms of Glory). These words and that music together make an excellent hymn of praise to God’s Mighty Majesty.

God, the Lord, a King remaineth,
Robed in His own glorious light;
God hath robed Him and He reigneth;
He hath girded Him with might.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
God is King in depth and height.

If you want a challenge, try defining the word life – without, of course, using the words live, living, or alive.

My husband sometimes tells about a teacher he had who told the class that fire was alive. After all, she pointed out, fire consumes fuel (eating), it grows, it moves, and it even reproduces (when one fire turns into multiple fires). Since they weren’t convinced, she challenged them to come up with a good explanation why she was wrong. I have to admit, I’d have trouble myself knowing quite how to go about forming the argument to refute her.

In case you’re having trouble coming up with a good definition of life, be assured that you are not alone. This article explains how difficult it is to formulate an adequate definition. If life is defined as something that can reproduce itself, sterile animals such as mules would not be considered living. If it is defined as a system that takes in energy to create order locally, crystals might be considered alive. And if it is defined as that which consumes energy to grow, move, or reproduce, fire could be considered living, as my husband’s teacher suggested.

Of course, that’s just trying to define biological life. God gives us not only physical life but also spiritual life. Any ideas on how to define that?

Both kinds of life are a lot easier to describe, or give examples of, than to define. And that’s fine – I’d rather spend my time and energy living than figuring out how to define what it is I’m doing. And the kind of life I’d like to be living is the kind described by Jesus as “abundant life.” I’m afraid my life often doesn’t seem very abundant – unless you count the stacks of dishes and clothes waiting to be washed.

Both Christians and non-Christians often identify the goal of the Christian faith as eternal life, by which they mean going to Heaven when we die. If by goal we mean “end point,” I suppose that’s accurate enough, since that is where we will end up – although the word “end” doesn’t seem quite appropriate when we’re talking about unending life.

But the focus really should be on life, more than on our destination after death. The life that God intends, that He wants to give us, is a particular quality of life that is holy, joy-filled, and not limited to the physical bodies we have right now. If we have that kind of life now, then of course we’ll still have it later, when these bodies have ceased to function.

My favorite Bible verses have long been John 11:25-26. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” As a new Christian, I learned a song based on those words from a college friend of my sister. I probably don’t remember the song accurately, as I’ve never heard it again anywhere else. But I still sing it to myself as best as I can remember it, particularly in times when life seems empty or filled with problems I don’t know how to deal with.

If it were up to me to figure out how to live this abundant life, I’d be in big trouble. But this life isn’t given to us like a Christmas present, wrapped up with a sheet of instructions included, leaving us to figure out how in the world to assemble the thing. It’s given only one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time, and the instructions come with a Helper to guide and encourage when the pieces just don’t seem to go together.

At least that’s what I’ve been taught, and what I believe in my head. Personally I seem to have a great deal of trouble figuring out how to hear the Helper’s voice. So I find it reassuring to know that He really does want me to have this abundant life, both now and forever, and He’s not giving up on me no matter how slow a learner I am.

This evening our pastor preached on obeying God because we belong to Him. I only caught the last part of the sermon, because I had been helping teach the K/1 class (which, as it happened, was about obeying God, using King Josiah as an example). Whatever God is telling us to do, the pastor said, “Just do it!” He read Ephesian 4:25-32, adding that these were not suggestions, they were commands from our Lord, which means that He is our Master.

I don’t really know what command in there He might be trying to get me to hear and do. But I do know that one good command to obey at any time is to praise Him. And this verse I found in Nehemiah, addressed to our Life-giving Lord, is a pretty good way to do it.

You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you. (Nehemiah 9:6)

It was easy to pick the word “king” as a title for God. But picking an adjective to go with it was much harder. I thought of “kind” right away, but I was concerned that it’s too much like the word “nice” – a bit on the vague side, and more about being pleasant than righteous. God is certainly kind – there are dozens and dozens of Bible verses that say so. But in many people’s minds I think “kind” is somewhat akin to “soft.”

There are not a lot of good adjectives starting with K, however. I thought of knowing as a possibility. (I considered Knowing Keeper based on Psalm 121:4-5.) Kingly might work if I had a different noun. Knightly doesn’t really fit, even if the virtues that make a knight knightly also apply to God.

Of course, there’s no rule that I have to come up with an alliterative pair to describe God for every letter of the alphabet. I don’t intend to do Q or X, and so far I haven’t come up with any ideas for Y and I’m not doing well on Z. But the image of King is a very prominent one in Scripture, so I didn’t want to skip it.

Today I looked up the word kind to get an official definition.  ”Generous, good” – that certainly applies to God. So do some of the words supplied as synonyms of kind: benevolent, compassionate, gracious, loving. But would I call God amiable? Or congenial? I know I wouldn’t want to use indulgent or softhearted. And humane just doesn’t sound right.

But I also found out something else interesting, about the etymology of kind. It is related to Old English cynn, meaning “family,” which became our modern English kin. Kind meant having the feelings that relatives have for each other. Since God is our Father, we are His kin, in a sense. But is He kind to us as our Father, rather than as our King?

Then I checked out the etymology of king. And I discovered that it may also be related to the word cynn. If so, it originally meant a leader of a group of people who were related to each other (as tribal groups were). So a kind king was someone who led a group of people related to him and felt toward them as relatives do toward one another. (Though from reading history, one doesn’t get that impression of most kings, even in the days when they were more tribal chieftains than rulers of sovereign states.)

Human kings tend to become somewhat distanced from their subjects, and would consider very few of them as relatives. There is a far greater gap between us and God – yet He chooses to make us His children and treat us as family rather than just subjects under His rule. Of course, being “kind” doesn’t mean He is always “nice” – far from it. But considering how poorly we often follow the laws of His Kingdom, He is very patient – and kind – to us.

When I did this (using the alphabet to come up with a list of words describing God) twenty-something years ago, I’m sure I didn’t wonder what it meant to say that God was just. Every church I have been part of since I was converted at age fourteen has clearly taught that justice means that God has to punish sin. We receive forgiveness only because the punishment we deserve was suffered by Jesus in our place.

This was a doctrine my mother hated. To her, that was the opposite of justice, for an innocent man to suffer in the place of the guilty, even if it was voluntary on his part. But she agreed that justice meant that people must bear the consequences of their mistakes. In this life, that meant one suffered the consequences of poor choices. After death, it meant reincarnation (or possibly transmigration) in order to continue working on problems left unresolved in the previous life.

I don’t remember ever hearing, until sometime in the past several years, the idea that justice might be seen in a significantly different way. At some point I read that the Hebrew notion of justice (what we see in the Old Testament) was not about punishment for wrongdoing so much as about wholeness, not just of the individual but of the entire community. Of course, there are a lot of different ideas out there when it comes to Bible interpretation, and I really didn’t know just how much validity this idea had.

I also read several books by Tony Hillerman, who wrote mysteries set (mostly) on a Navajo reservation. In Sacred Clowns, Navajo Tribal Police detective Jim Chee explains the Navajo concept of justice. In an interview before the book was released, Hillerman discusses the issue himself:

For example, the murderer in this new book has apologized anonymously, and, because traditional Navahos attach no value on vengeance beyond restitution, there is no real need to solve the murder. The Navaho way assumes the person who committed the crime is out of harmony and needs a ceremonial cure. It’s this contrast between justice and harmony that holds my attention as a writer.

Looking for further discussion of the concept, I found this by the Honorable Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court:

In Native American and First Nation justice philosophy and practice, healing, along with reintegrating individuals into their community, is more important than punishment. The Native peacemaking process involves bringing together victims, offenders and their supporters to get to the bottom of a problem. While contrary to traditional Eurocentric justice, this parallels the philosophy and processes of the modern restorative justice movement. In the Native worldview there is a deep connection between justice and spirituality: in both, it is essential to maintain or restore harmony and balance.

I had heard of restorative justice, primarily from reading materials published by Justice Fellowship. Their website explains describes restorative justice this way:

Restorative justice recognizes that crime harms people. It does not simply break a law. The justice system should aim to repair these injuries. Crime is also more than a matter between the government and an individual offender. Since crime victims and the community bear the brunt of crime, they, too, must be actively involved in the criminal justice process.

Their website also explains that restorative justice is not a new idea, but one that has its roots in Scripture, as well as being found in various cultures around the world. I know that Mosaic law requires restitution as the means to deal with a variety of offenses. I don’t know specifically what other aspects of restorative justice are included. So I started looking for more information on the Hebrew notion of justice.

One website explains it this way:

One word for justice in Hebrew is zedakah. The concept of justice in Judaism is different from Greek-Western views of this concept. The emphasis is not on “retribution” (punishment) or “distribution” (fair shares for all). It is more what human living should be like. That is why the word zedakah is not only translated into English as justice but also as righteousness, which means living a just life personally.

Another website discusses the meaning of the other word, mishpat, which is often translated as “justice.” Mishpat “is an obligation to do whatever is necessary to increase the quality of a person’s welfare. It is synonymous with ‘holiness,’ and is closely related to such concepts as ‘mercy,’ ‘grace,’ ‘peace,’ and ‘redemption.’”

So what does it mean to say that God is just? First and foremost, it clearly means that what God does is right. Whether He is punishing sin or providing for the needs of people, He is doing what is right. He is never unjust in His punishments, or indifferent to people’s needs.

In my experience, the people who most emphasize the punishment side of God’s justice are reacting against those who downplay the need for judgment on sin. And those who minimize the punishment/judgment aspect are reacting against those who make it seems as though that’s the main thing Christianity is about.

As a new Christian I identified with the former group, reacting against the church I had grown up in, where “social justice” was central and personal salvation barely thought of. After a number of years in churches where personal salvation was the primary and often virtually the only emphasis, I began looking for churches with a more holistic view of Christian faith and life.

So God is just, in all the meanings of the word. And now I realize I haven’t even begun to look at what it means to say God is a Judge. I do know that judges in Hebrew society were different from judges in our American society. But at 10:35 at night, and with a thousand words in this post already, I’m not going to start in on another word study. I’ll simply end with a verse which tells us that God is a Just Judge.

He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. (Psalm 9:8)

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. (Romans 8:26-27)

I may not be able to find a verse in the Bible that uses the word “intimate” in relation to God, but I don’t know a better description of it than “he who searches our hearts” who also knows the mind and will of God. How much more intimate can one be than to know someone’s heart?

Science fiction stories that deal with telepathy often bring up interesting issues with regard to people know other people’s thoughts. What would it be like to know someone else’s deepest thoughts? What would it be like for someone else to know every thought that goes through my mind? I remember one story where such knowledge led to greater understanding, but most of us would greatly fear having another person know us that well.

With God, though, it’s a comfort rather than a fear. If there were a choice on our part, of course, I don’t know whether we would choose to let God know everything about us. But since He does, and extends His love to us anyway, it is a comfort to be known intimately and loved.

And it is a comfort to know that our prayers are somehow “translated” from our stumbling and fumbling attempts to what they should be according to God’s will. I know my prayers are often pretty pathetic, but they are transformed by our Intimate Intercessor into something infinitely better.

We generally think of a helper as an assistant, someone lower in status and probably in abilities. Even knowing that by definition, it simply means “one who helps” (though my dictionary immediately adds “assistant” to help define the word), it’s not a word that conveys a sense of God’s greatness the way we might like.

But the Bible speaks many times of God as our Helper. (Of thirteen occurrences of the word “helper” in the NIV, six refer to God. I’m not even going to try to check all 284 occurrences of “help,” “helped,” or some other form of the word.) He is our Helper in the way a parent helps young children.

There are very few things I can’t do better than a young child. (Duck, Duck, Goose is one, though – I can run OK for a short distance, but they have a distinct advantage when it comes to getting up and sitting down quickly.) I am helping out of a position of greater status and ability, not less.

Of course when I help a child, I’m always asking myself, how much help should I be giving? My parents – especially my mother – refused to help me much so that I would learn on my own. I think she carried it too far, so I try to be somewhat more of a help. But like her, I do want to develop independence in my children, so I don’t want to do too much for them.

God doesn’t have that problem. He knows exactly how much help I need, even if I frequently think I could use a bit more help than He is giving. At least that’s what I’ve been taught, and what I’m willing to believe, even if I can rarely point to anything in particular and say, “There, that was God helping me.” Since there’s nothing I have that did not ultimately come from God, there is nothing I have or can do that does not depend on His help.

That difference between God and us is part of what we mean when we say “holy.” I remember as a child not having the faintest idea what the word meant, although it was part of familiar prayers and hymns. One time a Sunday School teacher asked us what we thought the word meant, and no one could answer. I don’t remember what she said it meant, either, but I’m sure my overall impression of the word was simply that it meant something to do with God.

I suppose that’s not too far off, but it doesn’t explain what it means for God to be holy. In Bible school I learned that its basic meaning is “set apart.” Holy things were set apart for God, and couldn’t be used for ordinary everyday uses. Saying that God is holy is saying that He is set apart from all that He has made – if only by the mere fact that He is the Maker and everything else exists only by His will.

But of course when we say God is holy – or people are holy – we are thinking in a moral sense also. God is set apart from sinners because He is pure and righteous. When people are holy, they also act righteously, like God but unlike so many other people. Not that any of us are perfectly holy, but our Holy Helper (John 14:26)  is helping us grow toward holiness.

I tried to decide between Good God and Generous Giver. And what I decided was that it was silly to think I had to choose between them. Then I decided I could add in Glorious and Gracious as well, as they also highlight such significant attributes of God’s character. I did leave out Great and Grand, as they seemed somewhat reduntant after using Glorious. (Besides, there’s probably a character limitation on titles for blog posts.)

Good

When I was little I learned the mealtime blessing that begins “God is great and God is good, let us thank Him for our food.” I don’t know what I thought those two adjectives said about God, other than that He was the ultimate source for all our food, and everything else. While there were definite differences between my father’s understanding of God and my mother’s, they both believed that God was both great and good. So I never really questioned those points either.

I did question some of the religious concepts my mother tried to teach me. On one occasion, for some reason I do not remember, I visited the Sunday School at her church (Unity School of Christianity). It wasn’t much fun – instead of making puppets or acting out Bible stories as we did at my father’s church (Congregationalist, part of the United Church of Christ), we just sat and talked about God.

And we learned a song, which was so short and simple that I still remember both words and music. “Nothing but good can happen to me, for God is all there is.” I found that song rather pointless, because it was clear that bad things sometimes happened to me, and to everyone I knew, and most likely to everyone in the world. Even if there was some deep truth in those simple words, that the things that seemed bad were really good in some mysterious way, it was still pointless, because singing it neither kept bad things from happening nor made them easier to deal with.

My mother’s idea of God as impersonal force meant that we were “co-creators” with God, and that we affected events by our thoughts. We were supposed to think of good things happening to us so that they would happen. And we weren’t supposed to worry about bad things happening, because just focusing our minds on bad things drew them to us. I think, as an adult, that there is some small grain of truth to that, and that our minds are capable of wielding powers that are generally relegated to the realm of make-believe. But ordinary experience provides little if any evidence to support my mother’s convictions on that matter.

Traditional Christian doctrine (as opposed to my mother’s beliefs, which she considered Christian, and an improvement on the traditional variety) is that God is a Person who makes choices that affect our lives. In some ways it makes it harder to explain why bad things happen to us, because we can’t blame all of them on our own negative thinking. (Certainly many of them are due to our own sinful choices, or the sinful choices of other people around us.) I’ve probably mentioned before that I don’t generally find the attempts to explain this very helpful. But I am convinced that God is good, and whatever the explanation is, it is not a defect in the character of God.

Glorious

This word doesn’t inhabit our active vocabulary very much. Occasionally there’s a glorious sunrise or sunset. Music can be glorious, though I’m not sure if I can think of any examples outside of classical music that would elicit such a description. Other than that, the word seems pretty much reserved for Christmas carols, hymns, and “church-talk.”

I don’t know whether it used to be different. Back when people understood less of how the natural processes worked, didn’t people feel a greater sense of awe at thunderstorms, snow-capped mountains, rainbows, and even the sun coming up each morning? Even those of us who still see those as manifestations of the power of God, and who appreciate the natural beauty of the world, don’t think in terms of glory every time the sun rises or the rain falls. (More likely, we think, “Morning comes too early, I want to sleep some more” or “Drat! I forgot my umbrella.”)

I imagine part of it is also that there are few if any human figures in our society who are in any way “glorious.” In earlier times when most people lived under the rule of kings, the king was given great glory. He was set apart from other people by his clothing, special titles, codes of conduct for people in his presence, grand ceremonies in his honor, and a general sense that he was wiser and better and more powerful than anyone else.

We see in our hymns, as well as many passages in the Bible (especially Psalms), how God was seen as all that a human monarch was but much more so. But for those of us living in a democracy, where egalitarian ideals make it hard to give anyone special treatment without provoking outrage from someone else, it takes some exercise of the imagination to envision royal glory.

God is glorious, of course, simply because He is God, Creator and sovereign over all, whether we see Him that way or not. But our worship is aided by being able to think of Him that way. I think that for me, that is part of why I prefer the rituals and symbols of the traditional church – even though I currently attend one that has very little traditional about it except its doctrine.

Gracious

I know I’ve talked about grace in previous posts. But it is so central to our Christian faith that it’s worth repeating. Philip Yancey wrote an excellent book on the subject called What’s So Amazing about Grace? Whatever you think of Yancey (Theopedia says that “in recent years, Yancey has been criticized as condoning or even promoting a number of unorthodox beliefs and practices”), the book is well worth reading.

It’s easy to talk about grace in the abstract, but of course it doesn’t exist in the abstract. Grace is the behavior of a Gracious God, and of people made in His image. Often grace is discussed in relation to the forgiveness of sins, which is wonderful enough in itself, but it goes beyond that to the many positive gifts God gives His people.

Generous

James 1:5 is speaking of wisdom when it says that God gives generously to all, but the Bible is filled with examples of God’s generous giving. And the world around us is also filled with examples of God’s generous gifts. From the beauty of creation and the rich resources it offers, to the abilities we each have and the things we can do and make for others to enjoy, to the joys of sharing life with family and friends, God showers us every day with generous gifts.

• green grass
• grapes, grapefruit, and grains
• gold and gems
• goats, giraffes, guinea pigs, and gerbils
• grins, giggles, and guffaws
• grandparents
• grandchildren
• gentleness and gladness

If I had to pick one of these alliterative names for God as my favorite, it would have to be Forgiving Father (Mark 11:25). It’s good for us to think about the different attributes of God and the varied aspects of our relationship to Him, because an overemphasis on any one of them (and a corresponding underemphasis on others) is not good. But “Father” encapsulates so many of those truths in a single word.

Father means that

• He is the source of our life
• He is in authority over us
• He love us
• He helps and teaches us
• He corrects us when necessary
• He has a continuing relationship with us
• He is personally interested in each one of us

I did not have a close relationship with my own father. I liked going hiking with him, or doing other physical activities (biking, swimming, making things on his toolbench downstairs). But I don’t remember talking much. He didn’t talk a lot (unlike our mother, who was aggravated by this lack of communication), and neither did I, so conversations between us were generally limited to practical matters – how to do something or how to get somewhere.

I remember one time at the dinner table he commented on Communion at church, saying that he felt close to God then – I think he even said something about God speaking to Him through Communion. It was one of the rare times when I learned something about his inner life. But I didn’t feel comfortable asking him to say more about it.

He was a poor disciplinarian, generally exercising little control over our behavior, but occasionally erupting in unreasonable (and sometimes violent) rage over some childish willfulness. I quickly learned to avoid sparking such reactions, but my older sister wanted to stand up for what she considered right, and bore the brunt of his wrath while my mother and I cowered in a locked bedroom. After one such incident (after which he was as always filled with remorse), he hung a noose in the basement. I would walk home from school in the afternoon wondering whether he might have decided to use it, and asking myself how I would feel about that.

If we had had a close relationship, perhaps I could have told him how it bothered me, but I had never opened up my feelings to him, and nothing happened to encourage me to start. I don’t remember even wishing I could; it simply was outside the realm of possibility. I took life as it came, and coped with it as best I could, and the idea of being able to act to change things came to me only with great difficulty, and then mostly in very minor matters (such as how to earn a little extra money).

I don’t remember how I felt about the idea of God being my Father. I had been taught to pray to Him as Father since my earliest childhood, but prayers were just words to say. I had no concept of God being a person to have a relationship with, just an impersonal force (as my mother believed). When I became a Christian as a teenager, I learned to pray because that was what good Christians did, but I did it out of a desire to do what was right, not any feeling of closeness to God.

While other people in Wednesday evening prayer meetings began their prayers, “Loving and gracious heavenly Father,” I merely prefaced mine with “Dear God.” I don’t remember thinking of my human father as the reason for this reluctance; I just had no sense of a personal relationship with God, though I hoped I did have one since I had asked Jesus to be my Savior. When, on rare occasions, I voiced my doubts on this matter to an older Christian, I was reminded that fact came first, then faith, and eventually the feelings would follow.

About the only time I felt some sense of closeness to God was when I would confess a sin that I had been struggling with (usually related to overeating). There would be a rush of relief in feeling clean again and being given another chance. (Though as I repeated the cycle over and over again I began to think it wasn’t really doing anything.) I felt genuinely bad about doing wrong, and grateful for being forgiven. But it’s not much of a relationship when the only time you feel close to someone is after hurting them.

One day I had a dream, which I remembered more vividly than most. It had much of the usual illogic of dreams, but I was convinced that some of its symbolism must have a direct bearing on my relationship to God. I was at some kind of carnival, which included a puzzle-game that involved being locked in a room that you had to get out of before time ran out or you would die. I got out, though I don’t remember exactly how, and then felt horror at the thought of people paying to take a chance on ending their lives that way. It seemed an excellent metaphor for human sin.

Then somehow I found myself on a path to a house, away from the carnival. There were other people also headed there, though not all that many compared to those who stayed on the fairgrounds. Inside the house, there was some beautiful but fragile object – a vase perhaps – that I accidentally brushed against, and it fell and shattered into pieces. I felt awful, and wanted to apologize and somehow make it up to the owner if I could, but I also dreaded that confrontation. Then I suddenly found myself in front of the host and hostess.

I remember being embraced by the woman, who seemed very much like the wonderful loving mother or grandmother in many stories I had read. I knew I was forgiven. I don’t remember being embrased by the man, or even if I actually saw him clearly, but I knew I was forgiven. And I knew that what I wanted more than anything was to please him and be in a right relationship with him. I woke up convinced that I had been dreaming about God. I also had a mental “image” – no visual image but very strong emotional content – of that relationship with God.

I’ve read arguments that it’s hard for people who did not have a good relationship with their fathers to relate to God as Father. And I’ve read counter-arguments, that even those with bad fathers know what a good father would be like, so they can be all the more grateful to have such a good Father in heaven. Since for the most part, I’ve encountered the former position among theological liberals (who want to offer alternate metaphors for God, such as Mother), and the latter among theological conservatives, I have tended to accept the latter view. After all, I have no trouble conceiving of God as the perfect Father.

However, it’s hard to relate personally to a mental concept. And two-way communication between God and me seems about as rare as it was between my father and me. I get His how-to instructions, via the Bible. And I enjoy walking, or biking (somehow swimming lost its appeal as I grew up), thinking of Him as my companion. I think I have a reasonably good idea of what He wants me to do, and I do want to please Him. But it would be nice to have the close relationship that some of my friends appear to have with their human fathers, and many Christians seem to have with the Heavenly Father.

I am glad that at least He forgives me for my sins that keep me from having a better relationship with him (usually sins of omission, not commission).