Intimately Transcendent

begins, ‘Our Father who is in Heaven…’. The first part is so familial and intimate. Jesus told us to address God as Father. The Creator calls you His child! Paul puts it this way, “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Rom 8:15). Jesus doesn’t say God is like a Father but is your Father. Jesus loved the faith of children. They know their dependence on their fathers and the delight he takes in them. Jesus said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”(Matt 18:3). The grand thing is that when we become like children, we become God’s children. Therefore, we can pray, “Our Father…”

However, it goes on in a seeming paradox, “who is in Heaven…” Is our Father distant, unknowable? Did God just get the world spinning and walk away? God is beyond our understanding, but God is known through His revelation. There are several ways the transcendent became intimate. God shows Himself through creation. “What may be known about God is plain to [us] because God has made it plain to [us]. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” (Rom 1:19). God speaks to us in dreams and visions. “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” (Joel 2:28) God reveals Himself through His laws. “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105) 

Finally, God is known most intimately through Himself, Jesus:

“Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” (John 14:8-11)

We all yearn for intimacy with God, to know the transcendent. You could say we were made that way. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.” (Blaise Pascal).

 May you know the intimacy of God’s joy for your life.

Jonathan