Describing God

In my spare time, I have been reading a book entitled, Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of Faith by Father Robert Barron. While I am not Catholic, this book speaks to the depth and height and length of God’s love and grace by trying to describe God. This book is one I highly recommend.

            In the book, Father Barron describes God using an early medieval theologian, St. Anselm of Canterbury. St. Anselm painted a picture of God in a way in which sums up the mystery of the Great Divine. St. Anselm states, “That than which nothing greater can be thought is God” I would also add to my description something St. Augustine said long ago, “if you can understand it, it isn’t God” We live in a world that is set on naming God. We live in a society that doesn’t believe in something unless we can put a name and a face to it.

            I am often fascinated when I walk into churches and see the depictions of the incarnate God, Jesus Christ painted in a light that often mirrors the beliefs, practices and even racial likeness of the congregation. You see in my experience of God, there is something so much more than a painting to describe the likeness of God.  I look into the faces of the people surrounding me, I look into the religions I am studying in school, I look into the nature that surrounds me in the Appalachia region and there, is where I find God.

            One of my favorite descriptions of God comes from the story of Moses, when Moses at the burning bush comes to ask for God’s name. God simply replies, “I am what I am” God is greater than any description we could ever tag God with. There is a certain majesty in knowing we will search our entire lives to find God’s description, and often it was in front of us the entire time. So the next time you’re up in the Appalachian Mountains, walking downtown in Statesville, or on the beautiful outer banks of our state, try for a change looking for God’s existence and try then to experience God. But those are just a few places, how about hospital beds, in the midst of death, in the midst of life? How about in a park, in a church, in a restaurant? Let me put it this way, if I asked you to make a cherry pie, you would say that you bring together cherries, sugar, flour, water, and the skill of the baker. If you’re like me and you can’t cook, you might ask for God’s presence as well. But then I realized something, God’s presence is already there. God is the reason there are all of those elements.

            Think about it in the context of a wonderful hymn, “God, who stretched the spangled heavens
infinite in time and place, flung the suns in burning radiance
through the silent fields of space, 
we, Your children in your likeness, 
share inventive powers with You;
Great Creator, still creating,
show us what we yet may do.” May the God in whom which we can only praise show us the reality of our existence, so that we may in turn come to find the meaning of life and of God.