FootprintsintheWind.com

Our images of God do not really work for us. We see an old man on a throne engaged or not engaged in our lives. Maybe all we want is someone to hear us out. That might work. But if we go the next step and see Daddy Big Spender, then we might just have to admit that when we ask, we don’t always get.

We see also someone pulling the strings for all that goes on in the world. How does “he” keep all those strings straight and untangled? Well, he’s God after all, and has magic and infinite capacity to keep it all straight in his head. But how’s that working for us? Again, we don’t always get. Or maybe God is a parent deciding what’s best for us minute by minute, and saying “No” or “Wait” as might be wise for us. But is this the kind of life that is best for us, being mere children totally at the mercy of some incomprehensible wisdom? What about the gifts we have been given: a brain, a heart, hands and feet? Ought we not employ these to their utmost? Where is there room for stretching?

Or maybe we have George Burns’ God who looks at what came of creation, shrugs, and says “Who knew?” Not much assistance there, although this God is good to cry with. This “weak” God is beloved also of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Then our picture might be of an unnamed force holding the universe or of the Way of the all there is. But we want to love, we want to pray, we want to say “You.”

If we then remember that in one tradition God says “have no images,” then perhaps we get an inkling of why none of these images, nor any others, can ever satisfy. Perhaps, just perhaps, God is more.

:- Doug.