Thought for Today
Exodus 33:21 And the LORD continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;
Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."
John 6:69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
John 14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
I read this morning about an author’s trip to an art museum. As she viewed the artwork, she felt resentment that none of her textbooks had included the warning, “These reproductions will never be as amazing as the original.” (These Days, May 7, 2026) Then she wrote, “Not. Even. Close. The same is true for imagining God.” (ibid)
I wrote on May 1, 2026, “I still remember reading about Augustine in seminary. I ‘dumb down’ his thoughts in my own mind to, ‘Whatever you think is God is not God. God is greater than anything you can imagine!’ Trying to fully understand God is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.”
In seminary, I also learned that some of us are visual learners, some are auditory learners and others are experiential learners. In truth, we all are some combination of all 3, but for many of us 1 or the other dominates how we come to learn.
Have you ever stopped to think about Jesus’ task in the Incarnation. I do believe what John captured in 3:16-17. Jesus’ task was to save God’s Creation. To accomplish that task, Jesus had to teach mankind about God. That task was much different 2000+ years ago than it should be today. Today, we have mass communication, television and increasingly social media. Could Jesus 2000+ years ago have merely posted on Instagram or Tik Tok? Obviously not. In fact, even the idea of Jesus’ posting on social media even today seems to me ludicrous. Jesus could not have purchased advertising time during the Super Bowl, could not have arranged product display at a convention or arranged a tie-in with a Taylor Swift concert. Then, how could one reach out to mankind with an important message?
Even now, how do we even begin to frame that important message? We cannot paint a picture. We cannot post a video. Even Moses could only interface directly with God except through a burning bush and could not literally see the face of God. Moses had to hide in the cleft of a rock.
How was Jesus and how are we to convey the totality of our Creator God when we cannot paint a picture, cast a figurine or even capture that totality in words? In fact, as Augustine pointed out, we cannot even capture that totality in our own thoughts. Our God is greater than anything we creatures can conceive!
But Jesus knew, “John 10:30 The Father and I are one." Even that doesn’t totally capture the reality, the image of God. Jesus repeatedly used the parent/child relationship to help us understand our relationship with God. But that relationship is only a metaphor for our relationship.
Without worldwide mass communication, without social media or any other human creations, Jesus’ only avenue of disseminating the message of God and of God’s love was through a group of disciples and through those whom Jesus could directly speak to and interface with.
Those disciples said they had come to “believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." By being in direct and constant contact with Jesus, they began to comprehend as much about the totality of God as we are capable of comprehending. But even then, they still needed to be reminded of all of that as they approached that final week in Jerusalem.
We still need to be regularly reminded that Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father. That same author this morning wrote, “We humans are capable of incredible imagination and artistic skill, but . . . our deity is even better than all the artistic abilities of all humanity.” (ibid)
In your prayers today, thank God that we do not need to rely on our own abilities, artistic, technical or linguistic. God knows all of that, so God sent us Jesus.
Stay safe, thank God, trust God,
Pastor Ray