In God’s image – Isaiah 55: 6-11

‘Seek the Lord while he may be found,     call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way,     and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,     and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts,     nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,     so are my ways higher than your ways     and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,     and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout,     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;     it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,     and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.’

When he was in prison, John the Baptist sent messengers to Jesus to ask him on his behalf “Are you the one who is to come?”  What was going on in John’s mind?  John apparently had his own mental picture of the Messiah and Jesus didn’t quite fit the pattern and act in the way John expected him to.

When I did my basic Christian Studies Course some 26 years ago, the first thing we were asked to do was to give an account of how we perceived God.    To some degree we all create God in our own image - the ‘nice-old-gentleman-with-the-white-beard’ springs to mind - but we each hold a picture in our minds.  Perhaps of a merciful God, or a judgemental one; a father, a brother.  Whatever the picture, we tend to unconsciously select and arrange our experiences of life to confirm the image we already hold.  We neatly file away and forget the signs that tell us that God is bigger than our ideas, but we shouldn’t confine Him to our little box of prejudices, maybe it would be more comfortable if he were!

Holding on to God is sometimes a bit like holding on to an elephant’s tail – you have to go in His direction, not yours, and this direction leads to expanding horizons: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” 

It is God who holds us in the palm of His hand, not the other way round.  He encourages and stimulates us to explore, to learn more, to move on to new riches, and in doing so we slowly assume his shape, modelled into his likeness, and we should be so thankful that He does.

Prayer

 Lord, as I reach out my hand, stretch out my mind to encompass your infinity.  In these moments of surprise when, open eyed I see your majesty and I flounder in the sea of your infinity, reach out your hand to me.  Teach me to swim in the current of your love, and in the frightening realisation of my own smallness, show me the greatness of your care. Amen.

Penny Bonham