“HEY GOD. Where are you?”
“Did I get it right? Do you really exist?”
Sometimes I ask that out loud, looking up at the sky from my office window.
That’s because sometimes it doesn’t feel like he exists. It feels like I got it wrong.
For heaven’s sake, I haven’t even met the Guy.
Not to look him in the eye or shake his hand.
He’s kind of a ghost.
Holy, if the Bible writers weren’t kidding.
But a Holy Ghost nonetheless.
Sometimes it’s hard to warm up to a Ghost.
Yet there are other times when he seems to come close.
Usually, for me, it’s unexpectedly. And in odd places.
I wrote earlier about how my thoughts turned to him during a dog walk in the rain this week.
It happened again, this afternoon. While I was writing.
Sometimes when I’m writing, it feels like someone pours a thought into my head.
It doesn’t at all feel like it’s coming from inside me. It feels like it’s coming from the outside.
That’s what happened when I was writing something for an upcoming book.
I was writing about how Jews didn’t seem to understand there was an afterlife in Old Testament times. Even in New Testament times, Jews were divided about that.
Pharisee Jews said the soul was immortal.
Sadducee Jews didn’t believe in an afterlife. Teaching moment: that’s why they were “Sad you see.” (You’ll never forget that now. You’re welcome.)
Jesus told the Sadducees they were dead wrong.
To prove it, he quoted God talking to Moses:
“God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’” (Mark 12:25, NLT).
In other words, God said I AM the God of Abraham. Not I WAS the God of Abraham.
Abraham is still alive.
Then the idea struck me.
God is the Great I AM. He’s not the Great I WAS.
He’s still alive, too.
I AM is actually his name.
That’s what God told Moses to call him:
“Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).
It felt like a God moment when I connected those two Bible passages.
It wasn’t something I read in a study Bible or one of the many commentaries spread open on my desk. It came from somewhere else, it seemed.
A reminder for me, perhaps, that God is still here. That I got it right.
Who would have expected to find God in a verb?
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