In God

How subtly our metaphor of God as King, as Lord and even Father nudges into feeling distant or separated from God. God on his throne in heaven, Jesus at his right hand, off somewhere beyond the boundaries of space and time, is he that bearded monarch, a being of infinite light? Understand how we image God impacts how we relate how we live. God is ineffable the Bible (and we) use metaphors to describe the indescribable. King, Lord, Father dominate but also Love, Mother, Birthing, Nursing, Shepherd, Rock, Wind, Fire, Lover and many others have been used to describe God. These metaphors evoke in our minds and subconscious specific attributes and feelings that impact our actions. Fixating on any one (or a few) causes a lopsided image of God, Our lopsided God makes it difficult to receive from God as Lover, or Nursing Mother, if those images are not already incorporated into our hearts.


God on a throne, heaven with streets of gold, it is only our attempt to describe the grandeur and majesty of God, King, throne, gold these are human characteristics not Gods. Do not get me wrong these are valid descriptions in as far as we are capable of describing the indescribable. Abraham Heschel says appropriately that “the statement ‘God is’ is an understatement” how could it not be so. The sacred cannot fit neatly into our definitions. Paul tells us that God made everything and has need of nothing, that He provides life, breath and everything else so that man perhaps would literally “feel” God. That is experientially not just intellectually or a belief, but to know intimately, relationally the living God! Further Paul says “in him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17.24-28)

Augustine writes to God

“How late I came to love you. O Beauty so ancient and so fresh, how late I came to love you! You were within me, yet I had gone outside to seek you. Unlovely myself, I rushed toward all those lovely things you had made. And always you were with me. I was not with you. All these beauties kept me far from you –although they would not have existed at all unless they had their being in you. You called, you cried, you shattered my deafness. You sparkled, you blazed, you drove away my blindness. You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and now I burn with longing for your peace.”

In whom we live, move and have our being we exist within God we breath in God we touch God each and every moment.

Thomas Merton writes

“Life is simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything – in people and in thing s and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only that is that we don’t see it.”

This is not a Christian state this is a human condition, Jesus tells us that if we feed, clothe or give water to the least on earth we do it to him, how; because God is in them! They, and you and I and all, live breath and move in God! The Psalmist tells us there is nowhere we can go that God is not there. Why do “the heavens declare the glory of God” because the sacred the Divine is there also.

My heart leaps! I am immersed, buoyed in God; do you feel Her, our Mother God? With each breath you feel and touch God. God is not out there somewhere He is here, now, in you.