Fully BelovedSample

The Bible stresses all kinds of things about God through word pictures: a stone wall’s strength, a tree, cooling water, an eagle’s wings. Even seemingly the impersonal images have relational aspects, though—for instance, God as a Rock of refuge, a burning bush that captures Moses’ attention, living water that purifies and restores the soul, or eagles’ wings on which God says “I bore you.” Imagery such as husband-wife, parent-child, or teacher-learner carries even more personal meaning. Consider the stone-of-strength variation in Deuteronomy, where God spoke through Moses and said, “You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.” (Deuteronomy 32:18). Both maternal and paternal—both highly personal. . . .

For God not only flung expanses of beauty across a night sky; he also became, for me, as the biblical story unfolds—as my story unfolds—like a heavenly Father. Here lies a balm to what my friend once called cosmic orphanhood. Julie Canlis captured this conviction well: “Written into the heart of the universe . . . is open and free conversation between us and God; [a certainty] that the universe is personal; that time rushes over a bedrock of love.”*

I owe much of that change to what I’m seeing of the Trinity—the warmth in the one God in whom I catch hints of how God’s own I look back on my earliest sightings and realize how they would grow into a wider vision. They primed me to see, later, that Being has more depth and interrelatedness than we may first realize. That God cared enough to make not automatons, but humans who could relate to him. Can you look back and notice the first sparks of such insight in your own life—perhaps even in early life? In those small glimpses of wonder, you may have been more of a child theologian than you knew. . . .

God wanted people to love and be loved in return. Here is a God fashioning human beings—persons “wonderfully made,” as the psalm I would learn put it. Personally made. A world made out of kindness.

*Julie Canlis, “Trinitarian Prayer,” Essays on the Trinity, Lincoln Harvey, ed. (Cascade Books, 2018), 178.

Prayer

Lord, I see your strength and love all around me, but I often let my worldly problems distract me. Thank you for reminding me that I am wonderfully made and that you love me deeply. Amen.

[P1]This footnote was for Bible Scripture references. I removed the fn and added those Scriptures to the list at the top of the reading.