My feet are not small. That is about the kindest way of saying they are big. Too big for most manufacturers, makers of basketball sneakers excepted. But in my mind, high tops, no matter what celebrity signed them, are not dress shoes. Often when trying to match footwear to more formal attire I have no choice. More than once, frustration and desperation have duped me into thinking a pair of brogues fit, when they do not. Unboxing my purchase, I would shod myself with a shoehorn, but in no time and little distance, my foot was cramping and my gait was hobbled. Good shoes must do more than suit us, they need to fit.
Let’s see if we can make the above illustration work for us. Thoughts about God are not small. They ought to be big, too big for our everyday way of thinking. Sure we can shoehorn concepts of God into something we find stylish, but time and experience will soon show our understanding is cramping and our walk with God is hindered.
One of the “thought brogues” that bewitches us is to believe that God is mostly like us. For sure, he is a personal God, but as a personal being he does not share our limitations, weakness or frailties. For example, let’s consider time. In our personal world, time is a non-renewable resource of which we never have enough. We try to maximize it by rushing and multitasking. God’s personal existence is not like that. He is sovereign over time. His life is not contained by time, his purposes are not governed by time, he has no past, no future, nor is he restricted to acting in the present. God’s lordship of time means he can ‘spend eternity’ engaged with us, and not in any way diminish his capacity to be engaged with another.
What other ways is the Lord Most High unlike us? Where else do we need to learn to think bigger thoughts about God?