The Art Of CelebrationНамуна

Immeasurably More

When I was five years old, I won a prize for creative writing.

The award-winning literary work featured a dinosaur-like creature that fought against a giant robot from the Irish coastal town of Bangor. This stunning narrative was later adapted into the major Hollywood release, "Pacific Rim," but unfortunately no royalties have been paid. (Sigh) I was, however, rewarded for this great work of imagination. I received a "trophy," or more literally, a plastic hippo holding a book and wearing reading glasses. (He was the academic type.)

I'm sure Pulitzer winners are given something similar.

Our imaginations are so incredibly fertile when we are children, but that does not mean we aren't still using them as adults: we imagine lots of things about God.

Some of us imagine that he has a large and flowing white beard and that he sits on a throne in a cloudy realm not dissimilar to some of the levels in Super Mario Bros.

Some of us imagine that he is imaginary.

Some of imagine that he only really likes people who go to the same church and have all the same political views that we do.

Some of us imagine that he is angry and working on new and ever more inventive ways in which to smite us.

Some of us imagine that he is just like our earthy fathers.

All of this is to say that we assume lots of things about God. We all have a picture in our heads of who he is.

The Bible tells us that he is better than those assumptions and more beautiful than that picture. Immeasurably more.

Our finite imaginations just don't have the processing power to accurately comprehend the infinite God. It's like trying to run the current Mac operating system on a 1970's pocket calculator.

But the wonder of the incarnation is that he made himself knowable. Touchable. Human.

Jesus is "the image of the invisible God." If we want a crystal clear picture of our maker, we just look at Christ.

We can know that God is loving, trustworthy and full of grace. We can know that he would die for us. We may not have all the details but the cross tells us enough.

"No eye has seen and no ear has heard..." What we don't know now, we'll know when we see him face to face.

And he is coming.