Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Blubbering God

God is love. The scriptures state it, I believe it, Christians have proclaimed it since the days of John. And yet, that's not quite the same as saying God is warm and fuzzy and has no edge to him. In fact, God is scary. He's absolute, there is none that can deliver from his clutches, and his absolute mastery over all of us and all things is punctuated by the ultimate unavoidable reality--death! And a lot of us die, suddenly, without hope in this world or the next. Yet, God doesn't seem to care or even shed a tear.

There are a few things that bring this into clear focus:
The writer of Hebrews said it was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The fact is, we're all there whether we want to be or not, or regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. There is only one sure palliative that cures our shakes and makes the frightening God approachable--the blood of the Lamb. So stop trying to make God into a big, soft, stuffed animal. The real God is a consuming fire, only gods fashioned in the imagination blubber.

5 comments:

SLW said...

Cindy,
I suppose that's true. So much here in the fog of the passing is mysterious and leaves one breathless. We have Jesus, what's he's done and said, and that is a comfort in the midst of so many other things we don't understand about life and death.

Cindy said...

I explained it to my daughter this way: If you saw someone running toward a cliff, and they didn't respond to your yelling, so you shot them in the leg to stop them...Sort of a western ND proverb :).

It's good to know that God is good and merciful - much more so than any of us.

marvin said...

God is on the extremes. He's the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Creator and destroyer (if I may say so, can't find the proper word).

He is the Judge, but he provide the way for us to be 'justified'.

He is the most loving father and the most fearsome king.

He said "you sinned, then you go to hell", but he said "here is Jesus, so you can go to me".

SLW said...

Marvin,
Kindness and severity, what an awesome mystery.

I've always believed progress happens at the extremes. Mediocrity is seldom productive. Maybe it's a divine concept.

Cindy said...

SLW,
Most people are pretty effective at avoiding ND - lol. Actually the eastern part is the farming vs ranching side - for you PA types :).