After Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician and philosopher, died in 1662, they found a piece of paper in the lining of his coat. So important were these words to him (which he had written eight years earlier) that he kept them close to his body day after day. The scrap, which contained his central convictions, read: Dieu d’Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. (God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the learned.) And then these words follow: Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. (Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.)
According to the calculations of this mathematician and vivid believer, among the multitude of competing deities there is one who is a real, live God, who moved in history, and who introduced himself by name to people like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And if he was known to them, he could be known by Blaise–and by anybody named Juan, Jessica, Michael, and Kwame, and you, and me.
It was not Pascal, however, who invented this attribution for God. It was when Moses stood before a mysterious bush on fire that was not consumed that he heard his name “Moses! Moses!,” and then a name for God, a grand introduction at a watershed moment in history: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” and Moses hid his face (Exodus 3:6).
Though God does not have a physical face, he does dynamically interact, as when, in the desert of Sinai, he introduced himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” This is no ethereal description of a divine force, no abstract set of metaphysical (“above the physical”) characteristics. God said to Moses, I am the one who came to people such as Abraham, called them, motivated them, instructed them, inspired them, protected them, fed them, and corrected them. I am the one who made promises and entered into covenants, who had compassion when they suffered, and who stood with them against evildoers. I am a personal God, which is why you can speak with me and listen to me. Most important, you can trust me. Had God not said that, perhaps Moses would have thought of him as “the god of mysterious fire,” or “the god of desert magic,” or “Bush-baal.”
God is the “I am,” and would soon tell Moses to tell the people that “I am” had sent him. Imagine the world if human beings stopped thinking of God as an “it” that they are trying to discover like some new astrophysical phenomenon, and realized that “I am” is searching us out.
[Exerpt from Putting the Pieces Back Together: How Real Life and Real Faith Connect. Click for More.]
Get a free copy of the E-booklet “Living a God-Filled Life” when you sign up for Mel Lawrenz’s weekly article, The Brook Letter.
We’d love to have you join us on Facebook or follow on Twitter.
Thank you Father for who you are, who you’ve always been, never constricted or confined by time or space. Thank you that you incarnated yourself as Jesus the Man so the world would come to know real love, true compassion and mercy, one who would sacrifice everything so we could be reunited with our first love, and the one who left us the Holy Spirit, the one that is greater than the one who is in the world. Oh that we could love you as much as you love us.
I am glad for this one thing: You have kept it real for me.
My hope comes from you O LORD.
You are the GOD of ages past, King of The Patriarchs.
I can say without doubt – You are mine & I am yours, always & forever.
Without Doubt.
Amen.
This is great. I enjoy it. God is my father. I pray he helps me to enjoy him better. God bless you.
I am thinking that God does have a physical face since the very presence of his back burned and blinded Moses. On the other hand, while I’ve never seen Him, I have felt His presence and I have seen His hand at work in my life. And for that I am eternally grateful. I am blessed beyond measure.