God Indescribable

Morning worship service, September, 16, 2007; new song: “Indescribable.” I learn it was written by Laura Story

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation’s revealing Your majesty
From the colors of Fall the the fragrance of Spring
Ev’ry creature unique in the song that it sings
All Exclaiming

Indescribable uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky and you know them by name
You are an amazing God
All powerful untamable
Awestruck, we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing, God

Who has told ev’ry lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night?
None can fathom
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From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation’s revealing Your majesty
From the colors of Fall the the fragrance of Spring
Ev’ry creature unique in the song that it sings
All Exclaiming

This rings out from Genesis 1, Psalm 19, Psalm 150, and indeed the entirety of the biblical story.
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Indescribable uncontainable
You placed the stars in the sky and you know them by name
You are an amazing God
All powerful untamable
Awestruck, we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing, God

“Indescribable.”
On one hand the via negativa. The way of speaking of God by speaking only of what he is not. This kind of theology, spoken of by theological sophisticates as apophatic theology, has a history almost as long as Christianity. How can human words, music, painting or any other medium describe the holy God? We have only to begin the attempt to be challenged by others or to give up the effort on our own.

The indescribable God.

On the other hand is the long history of describing God by analogy; the Bible does this: Father, Creator Judge, Almighty, King, Lord; jealous, angry, like a mother, hate, love, pleasure. God described by analogy, yet all analogy fails to comprehend the incomprehensible, undescribable God.

Yet. Yet John 1:18: “. . . the only son . . . has made him known.” Yet Colossians 1:15: “He is the image of the invisible God.” Yet, Hebrews 1:1-3: “In many and various ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son . . . [who] reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature.”

God has revealed himself to us by his Word, Jesus, Son of God. Jesus is the description of the indescribable God.

But can Jesus be described?

“Indescribable.”
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“Uncontainable.”
Solomon knew this. When he dedicated his temple to God, in public prayer Solomon acknowledged that eternal and holy God could not be contained by the entire created universe, yet he prays that, in some special way, God would be found in this temple by those who diligently seek and call upon him.

“Uncontainable”
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“You placed the stars in the sky and you know them by name”
Job 38 quickly comes to mind, and Isaiah 40.
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“You are an amazing God
All powerful”

Yes, God is amazing, like a maze, we are overwhelmed by the sense that we can never find our way through the dimensions of the divine heart. We live in a world and among events that constantly cause me to be, and say, “I am amazed.” Ask my wife; she hears it all the time.

But I am bothered by what, all through the history of Christian song, has amazed song writers. Read/sing them all, all of them, and find as the dominant note this same emphasis: “All powerful.”

Consistently we sing of and worship the God who is omnipotent. There are exceptions to this emphasis on power. There are exceptions that properly catch the dominant biblical note: “Amazing Grace;” “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean;” Twila Paris’ “Lamb of God.”

Songwriters, help us to sing our “hallelu” to “Yah” for his love, grace, mercy, loving-kindness toward wretches such as John Newton was and some of us are. “Amazing Love, How Sweet the Sound.”
Yes, God is the God of power, but his power is subordinate to his love, serves his love, and is exercised only in love.
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“Untamable”
Yet, to an extent we are better off not knowing (or would we be better off knowing?), our theologians (both lay and professional), our culturally conditioned Bible study groups, and Sunday School classes present to us a God they seem to have tamed. God remains untamable.

Even heretical trinitarian theology can remind of us that God is untamable:
“God the Father is the transcendent Judge who is going to get us if we don’t watch out. God the Son is our friend in court and will get us off the hook of God’s condemnation. Jesus is the “good guy.” And God the Spirit? The Spirit is the one responsible for all the weird and wild stuff.”

This seriously flawed attempt to describe the indescribable trinitarian God at least recognizes that the Holy Spirit is untamable. The Spirit blows wherever he wants to.

“Untamable” I like that new and needed note.
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“Awestruck, we fall to our knees” Job, finally; Simon Peter in the boat.
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“Amazing God”
Good. Not, “an amazing God,” not a comparison among the gods. Merely, truly anarthrous.

“Amazing God.”
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“Who has told ev’ry lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night?”

Job 38
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“None can fathom”

Fathom . . . verb 1) understand after much thought: I can't fathom him out. 2) measure the depth of.
-ORIGIN Old English, 'something which embraces' (the original measurement was based on the span of a person's outstretched arms).

Not even “after much thought,” (and many of us have given much thought across many years) can we “measure the depth of” the amazing, awe-inspiring holy and loving God. Our arms aren’t long enough to completely reach around, to completely embrace the One who graciously wraps his arms of love around us.
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This was my immediate response as, yesterday morning, we sang our “Laura’s song,” about God: “Indescribable.”

Far too much of the music I hear Christians sing these days is, if not fluff (which a lot of it is), at least light weight. “Indescribable” joins “Lamb of God” at the head of the heavyweights.