My 90 year old neighbor, who served as a priest during his life, said recently about faith: "If people were honest, we are all agnostics because we don't know if God is really real... no one has seen Him." His words didn't surprise me but did sadden me. He speaks for himself and for a lot of people, but not for me. My response to him: "I believe that many are agnostics because they just don't know HIM".
Once a person seeks to know God, then He opens their eyes to see Him.
God reveals himself to us in so many ways. He fashioned all of creation to show himself: The sun in the sky mimics the burial and resurrection of the Son of God- God in flesh, continuously. The sun is the light of the world, just like the Son of God claims Himself to be in Scripture. An artist shows the magnificent, Designer-Creator God. The marriage relationship shows the relationship and intimacy of Christ and the church. The parent-child relationship pictures the relationship and fierce love of God to his children; It shows the dependence a child has on his father as we have on God, the Father.
The family relationship allows us to live out a picture of the body of Christ.
Being rejected and betrayed allows us to understand the sufferings of Christ and thus how much He loves us in spite of rejection. Through doctors we see a picture of The great Physician. As a counselor breathes life, hope and wisdom, we see a picture of THE Counselor and the ONE who IS Wisdom itself. We watch forgiveness in action and see how HE forgives us. We will need forgiveness and we will need to forgive. We get to experientially understand the act and freedom of forgiveness in order to understand Him and His mercy and our undeserved forgiveness!
Seeing the meticulous order in this world and the amazing, intricate order in the human body alone shows us that He is the Creator of Science itself. Just like a person cannot live without love, this demonstrates that we cannot live without Him, who is love Himself.
Every day we see unrighteousness....and that shows how much we need Him who IS Righteousness. We see the hopelessness without a Savior who redeems and heals.
When someone who has been hurt is cared for and comforted, we see a physical picture of God and how he comforts and makes all things right. He is the lifter of our heads and the health of our countenance.
The court system gives us a living picture of God, who is Judge over all.
We learn of kings in history and we get an understanding of the KING who is KING over all kings. We get to experience a living picture of authority and therefore understand the concept of authority. The sky is blue, the universal color of faithfulness, and therefore is a continual, daily reminder of HIM who is faithfulness itself.
We are in a tiny place of space and time surrounded by unbelievably huge galaxies of universes...and told that He knows our name. What a picture of who He is in comparison to who we are. We get that picture slightly, and then He says that He loves us? We are so small and He is so huge. And yet He loves us!?
We have teachers to understand that HE is The Teacher and we have friends to understand that He is a Friend that sticks closer than a brother. Mathematicians, Builders, Farmers and Shepherds, Musicians, Writers, Caretakers....they all give us a living picture of a living God. We get to see and experientially live out these things to "see" and understand and know God. He is unimaginably kind and filled with inexhaustible grace and unending compassion.
God came and showed us how to live and what we are to do in this life. What kind of love is this that the King over all kings would come to live among sinful men in order to demonstrate how we are to live, and then, to pay the price for our sin? Our sin, our wrong, our penalty. He went to a cross, The Holy One, and was crucified as payment. To show us what real love is.
A dying of self for the benefit of others, all so that we could be reconciled to Him, a perfect God. In that picture we see that He is the only spotless one, the Deliverer of mankind from the bondage of their sin, He is the Lamb of God, the final sacrifice, the lover of our souls who would go to the greatest extent to show His love for us. He took our place and therefore is the Hero, He is the bread of life and the living water where we will never spiritually thirst or hunger again.
I see him daily. I worship him in spirit and in truth. He opens my eyes and allows me to see His glory. In all of His creation we see some aspect of Him. I am amazed by Him each morning when I wake up and each night when I go to sleep. He walks with me and He talks with me. He directs me and He guides me. He listens and He responds in a million different and unbelievable ways. When I saw Him, I was undone by HIM.
To my neighbor, I say "Until people really KNOW God, who He is and His many amazing attributes, it is no wonder that people are agnostic".
Soon, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that HE IS LORD,
Colette
Comments