I have looked up a lot of information about the royal family. I did the same when both Prince William and Prince Harry got married, when Prince Harry and Meghan left the royal duties and now, since Queen Elizabeth died.
There’s just so much going on in that whole system that I don’t understand because I am not affected by it. But each question I search leads me to additional questions to look up.
And it is fascinating!
The more I learn, the more I want to learn, and it feels like there is just so much information that I still don’t know and might not ever understand.
I feel similarly when I think about studying the Bible. The more I learn about God, about Jesus, about the disciples and Israelites even, the more I want to learn. The deeper I want to go. And there is still so much that I either won’t know until I get to heaven. There may be some things I won’t know even then.
Our indescribable God
If you had asked me maybe five years ago to describe God, I probably would’ve said “holy” or “perfect.” Those aren’t bad descriptions — they’re completely accurate. But there are also so many other words we can use to describe Him. One of those words is even “indescribable.”
As I have gotten to learn more descriptions through studying Scripture, I have also started to realize how the world, including myself, have humanized and lessened the descriptions. I say “awesome” a lot in my daily life.
Here’s a quick definition of awesome: inducing awe, inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration or fear.
God is awesome. He induces awe and causes, or inspires, an incredibly overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration and fear.
The smoothie bowl that I had last night, while really tasty, cannot be accurately described as “awesome.”
Human limitations
I’m probably going to accidentally continue to use “awesome” as a descriptor of everyday things because it’s a bit of a habit, but I do want to try to break that habit.
The words we have chosen to use to describe God are both perfectly accurate and, at the same time, not enough to wholly depict Who God is. But we’ve done what we can with our human limitations to describe Him as an act of worship. So I’d like to try to keep those descriptors as forms of worship and not “casual-ize” them.
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe” (Deuteronomy 10:17).
