From a Boy to a Man

When I was a ten year old kid trying to figure out God, I came to the conclusion that He was up there above my world hanging around on the edges of the big cumulus clouds in the sky.  And if I recall correctly what I remember, He had a big book with names in it and He was always peering over the edge of those clouds to see what was happening below.  I guess it never occrued to me to wonder where He was on blue sky cloudless days!    

What is reality is that all our attempts to understand God have inconsistent holes in them.  What seems to work admirably one day simply does not fly on the next day.  Perhaps, it can be no other way as we with finite minds and visions that are so limited cannot really perceive of One who is eternal, every present, invisible, always revealing Himself, silent, always speaking, and here and there.  God is simply beyond us.  Our understandings are like what can be held in the old fashioned thimble my mother used to keep with her sewing stuff.    

The boy of long ago has become an old man.  And, what I must confess is a more mature concept of the Holy One, but one that is really more about what I do not know than what I do know.  I have learned to live in a world of accepting that there is more I do not know about God than can ever be known.  There is nothing so profound in this view.  It is one that has been embraced by far more people before me than I could ever count.  In the beginning I thought I could figure it out, but as the years have passed, the figuring it out has been replaced by a faith in the Unknown One, the Invistble One; and yet, the ever present One who is always revealing Himself and making His voice known to us.