It is impossible for us to come up with an adequate image of who God is. Every attempt to do so will be incompletee. Everything we say is but a glimpse of God’s real being. Today we have the opportunity not to clarify a truth but to proclaim what we believe. Our God is personal, involved in our lives and is calling us to come home together.
God is the perfect love that engenders hope and courage and it is this Love that helps us to maintain a sense of purpose, peace and unity in our lives. It is this love that enables us to go out and preach to all nations, knowing that God is with us until the end of the age.
We believe that our God continues to reveal Himself to us out of love - as Creator, Savior and Sanctifier. He fills out our understanding of His greatness by speaking to us through the power and majesty of creation, through the life, death and resurrection of His Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ, and He continues to reveal Himself to us by the indwelling of the Spirit, which enables us to live our faith with courage, wisdom, reverence, and abiding trust.
The community of persons in the Triune God is the result of a divine love so intense and so profound that it cannot be contained or defined in one dimension. It is a love that not only creates, but a love that redeems and sanctifies. It is a love that brings light and warmth to the dark side of our journey. It is a love that constantly offers to heal our brokenness, to lift us above our selfishness and pettiness, and to reach out to save us when we edge toward the abyss of despair.
But leaving aside theological explanations of the nature of God, we come finally to the realization that God cannot be defined. God can only be experienced.
God surrounds us in every time and place. God speaks to us in the gentle rustle of autumn leaves or in the crashing of the waves upon the shore. But we need to open our ears to listen if we are going to hear what God is saying. God is present to us as the softness of a baby’s fingers wrap around ours or in the comforting embrace of a caring friend. But we must be open to sense God’s touch. God’s love is present in the aroma of nonna's homemade pasta sauce or in the favorite cologne of our spouse. But we must be willing to recognize what is right under our nose. God is present to us in the brilliance of an ocean sunrise and in the twinkling of a starry night. But first we must open our eyes.
Yes, our God is a mystery, invisible, and transcendent. But our God is personal, and intimately bound up in who we are, what we do and how we relate to everything around us. It is in this God that we live and move and have our being.
