Who or What is God?

This post title alone, I am sure, has brought a few of you to read today. My conservative friends will be reading this to see where I have departed from the faith! After all, God is a person, not an inanimate object as the word "what" would infer.  And I would agree, at least to a certain degree. Keep reading.......


For me it is one of the great mysteries trying to understand who God really is. And yet God is to be the beginning of and then the center of my spirituality. Since I was a small child, I have always thought of God being up in Heaven waiting for people to join Him when their time had come. Jesus would be there also, but His Spirit would be here within my life.


But for me to grow in my spiritual life, I have needed a better definition of where God is. And so, I come back to the words of Paul who is credited in the book of Acts as saying that God is the one by whom we "live and move and have our being." In other words, God is all around and all in us. God is not in any particular location. He is the location and we are in Him. The Psalmist cries out where can I go from your Spirit? The answer is nowhere, because He is the location of where we are. Mystical stuff. Confusing stuff. Good Bible college late night talk stuff.


All around us is that alternate universe that we can not see or touch. The Bible speaks to the fact that spiritual activity is all around us, even that angels walk among us without our even knowing it. For example, we are told to be hospitable towards all people, as some of them may be angels that we do not recognize. We are living in two worlds: the earthly world that we can see and touch and then there is the spirit or spiritual world that is also all around and even in us. And remember, God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.


Why is that important to my spiritual growth? To grow spiritually means that I must learn to more and more recognize that He is in me and all around me. He is with me. I am in Him. For me my spiritual journey is of day by day trying to follow even more the two commandments: Love God and love my neighbor. That happens when I start to see God in everything around me. When I look at a Florida sunset I see His work and my heart fills in praise. When I see an individual, I see someone who was made in His image. When I see something that is deformed I cry out to Him to have mercy. Everywhere I look, I see Him, and so I converse with Him. He is my All in All.


Admittedly, seeing God in everything, or should I say, seeing everything in God, is far more difficult to practice than it is to talk about. But that is my goal and desire - to have that oneness, that fulfillment, that total love and compassion that He only has. My own spirit and the many spirits around me prevent that unity, love and compassion on a daily basis. However, the more I can learn to focus on seeing God everywhere, the closer I will come to true spirituality.


Blessings,
David