Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak.
Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
The child, the philosopher, and the religionist all have one question: "What is God like?"
This book is an attempt to answer that question. Yet at the outset I must acknowledge that it cannot be answered except to say that God is not like anything; that is, He is not exactly like anything or anybody.
We learn by using what we already know as a bridge over which we pass to the unknown. It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the totally unfamiliar. Even the most vigorous and daring mind is unable to create something out of nothing by a spontaneous act of imagination. Those strange beings that populate the world of mythology and superstition are not pure creations of fancy. The imagination created them by taking ordinary inhabitants of earth and air and sea and extending their familiar forms beyond their normal boundaries, or by mixing the forms of two or more so as to produce something new. However beautiful or grotesque these may be, their prototypes can always be identified. They are like something we already know.
The effort of inspired men to express the ineffable has placed a great strain upon both thought and language in the Holy Scriptures. These being often a revelation of a world above nature, the writers are compelled to use a great many "like" words to make themselves understood.
Verse:
And I””in righteousness I will see your face; / when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness. Psalm 17:15
Thought:
Human words and thoughts lack the exactness, the preciseness to describe what God is like; there is an existence beyond the human one that cannot be captured in our language.
Prayer:
Holy Father, let us be satisfied with seeing your likeness, with understanding as much as we can about what you are like.