This morning I read the following from Richard Wurmbrand's 100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain. The part I wish I could have shared on my friend's FB wall is the highlighted portion.
Where and What is God? (Meditation 37)
As creatures of the earth, we think of God as being on high,
declaring, “His glory [is] above the heavens” (Psalm 113:4), while the heavenly
beings think of Him as being below, declaring, “Let Your glory be above all the
earth” (Psalm 57:5).
Both have limited vision. God is outside of space. The One who is all in
all cannot have a certain place to dwell, to the exclusion of other places.
Therefore Christ, who is God, says, “Foxes have holds and birds of the air have
nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20). If He
were limited to space, He would not belong to the Godhead.
God occupies no place anywhere. As Creator of the Universe, He existed
before there was such a thing as place. Space is required by material objects,
but not by thoughts, ideals, and desires, which do not rest in a point fixed by
geographical coordinates. God is Spirit, not a material object that must exist
somewhere. When the Bible says that He is in heaven, it is to indicate His
elevation. God dwells in Israel, in Zion, in His church: such things are said
for the purpose of giving honor to an institution or a people. But these
assertions in the Bible are never exclusive – they do not limit God. They do
not mean that He is in Zion, but not in Britain; in church, but not in a
factory.
Nor can time be applied to God. The biblical Hebrew has no tenses to
indicate time; you cannot say that things have been or are or will be. You
enter the sphere of divinity, of timelessness. The Hebrew verb has only two
fundamental categories, the perfect and the imperfect. Oseh means “in the process of being done.” Asah indicates completed action. Biblical Greek also has a verb
form called Aorist, which literally translated means “without horizon.” God
created the universe, which has time as one of its attributes, but He and His
people are timeless. He was when there was no time. He will be when “there
should be time no longer” (Revelation 10:6, KJV).
God is called Father and King because we humans associate these titles
with our concept of esteem. He did not procreate us a father did. He did not
become king by inheritance or conquest as other kings do. He is above all that
we can say in human words.
When
David Livingstone went to the cannibals in Africa, he wished to teach them “God
is love,” but they did not have the word “love.” So he asked them what was the
best thing they knew. They replied, “Unboi,”
which is the smoked meat from the arm of a man. So Livingstone preached, “God
is the best unboi.” He was criticized
for this, but wrongly. God is not unboi,
it is true, but neither is He love. Love is a sentiment shared by humans and
superior animals. But is God merely a human sentiment? Because love was the
highest thing the Greeks knew, John said, “God is love,” just as Livingstone
said, “God is unboi,” for those who
knew no better.
There are no human words and categories to indicate how and where God
is. Whenever attributes are applied to God, they are what are called “anthropomorphisms,”
likenesses from human life that are used to tell something about Him. We are
limited in our thoughts and words about God, but let us know that, beyond all
our limitations, He is.
