Note from Lisa – How I am
Today is the second Monday of the month, and I’m sharing how my faith shapes my interaction with people and God’s creation. Last month, I shared my Statement of Faith. This month, I’m focusing on the first section of my Statement of Faith:
I believe in God, the Holy Mystery, known yet beyond human knowledge and understanding, the Creator of all that is and all that will be. In love, God seeks relationship, restoring the broken and reconciling the estranged, leading creation to its final harmony with the creator. I believe that all people are created as unique individuals in the image of God. Through our individuality, we have developed different ways of comprehending who God is and speaking about God as a nurturing parent, creator, sustainer, eternal, almighty, and perfect love. Yet, no single expression from our finite realm is sufficient in and of itself to describe the infinite God.
Throughout my life, God has been beyond my imagination – a Holy Mystery. I find that the language we use to explain God is limited by our culture, our family of origin, our nation of origin, and the church we did or did not grow up attending, and it does not begin to encapsulate God. I’ve lived and worked with people who see God as Father, based upon how Jesus taught us to look at God as a loving parent, but also in a way that places male over female and white over any other color. And I’ve known people for whom the imagery of Father brought pain and sorrow. Although I have used Father language when speaking of God, I’ve never imagined God as a male father figure. Rather, I experience God as being like a loving parent, willing to gently teach us how to interact with one another, how to love one another, and how to interact with God. And I have difficulty imagining God in human form, so I rely on experience and feeling rather than on creating God in my likeness.
The mysterious part is understanding a creator described as omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Because all of those things, all part of what God is, are too big for me to comprehend. I can’t fathom the power of God to create or destroy, the presence of God that is everywhere, and at the same time so magnificent that being in God’s presence can be deadly. I do not comprehend the ability of God to know all that I do and all that I think, all I fail at doing, so I put that out of my thoughts and focus on the part of God I know from experience. For me, God is my creator, who is all-loving in power. Knowing God is all-loving and desires to be in relationship with you and me, and desires for us to be in relationship with each other and God, helps me to experience the mystery in the beauty of creation, the love of my siblings in Christ, the power of family, and the joy of worship.
How we each understand God is also part of the mystery, because we are each uniquely created by God. So, in love, I have learned from and been enriched by the various understandings of God. And it is my hope and desire that we all can work within God’s love to share God’s love with the world and encourage others to know their Creator.