The God I long to know

David Theaker

‘Praise the Lord, O my soul:
O Lord my God thou art become exceeding glorious;
thou art clothed with majesty and honour.

Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with a garment:
and spreadest out the heavens like a curtain.    Ps 104

How to put into words what no words can truly express?

The Creator              The Immortal                  The Almighty

        Awesome      Glorious      Worshipped     Adored

To whom will you liken me
With whom can you compare me?
I know no one – there is no other.

There is but One worthy of all worth-ship.

 Who do you trust, to whom do you turn?
To the One who is beside you every step of the way, every day of your life. 

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, not to condemn – but to save.
Our God is merciful. 

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty. 

For the love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.

Our God IS Merciful.

You declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity.
You are always more ready to hear than we to pray.

 Last, but by no means least – God is Kind.

 Time and time again the Psalmist tells of the ‘loving-kindness’ of God,
who knows our frailty only too well.

He knows that, in words familiar to me since childhood:

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.
We have done those things which we ought not to have done
And there is no health in us.

But God is the One to restore our health and bring us back to his heart of love.

Some 30 years ago, W H Vanstone, parish priest and theologian wrote, in ‘Icons of the Passion’

                            Loving itself is a beginning, an invitation, an offering,

                            For the receiving which it invites but does not compel

                            Love can only wait

                            And to wait no longer is to cease to love.

God does not, cannot, cease to love, it is his essence, nor does he cease to pour upon us his loving-kindness.

He waits for us to see the truth, the life, the love which is in Jesus our Lord.

He stretches out his hand and invites us to his Heavenly Banquet.