A child was feverishly drawing a picture of someone. His mother asked him what he was drawing. “God,” he answered. “But nobody knows what God looks like,” his mother patiently explained. “They will when I am finished,” the boy concluded. We have to admire his confidence. What is God like? Many in the world wonder. If someone asked you, how would you answer that question? When finite minds try to describe the infinite nature of God, our words fail us.
You may remember the story of the three blind persons who were asked to describe an elephant. One compared the animal to a wall, feeling only its solid side. Another felt the tusk and concluded an elephant is like a spear. The third man felt the trunk and compared it to a snake. Each of them had a limited perspective based on their own experience of the elephant. Our infinitely creative God is impossible for finite minds to comprehend or characterize completely.
Seeing God clearly because God was his God, Isaiah offered us a personal description. God’s faithfulness confounds the ruthlessness of his enemies. He plans all that he does.God destroys the cities of those who oppose him. As a result, his ruthless enemies revere him. God is a refuge for the poor, shelter from the storm and shade from the heat. He reduces the noisy world to a holy hush. Habakkuk would later put it this way, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20).
Our vision of God acknowledges our own limited perspective. But God makes himself fully known to those who seek him. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). In a ruthless world, we run to God, our refuge, and find him perfectly faithful.
