God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Gerard Manley Hopkins

I married into a family that appreciated Creation in a way my family of origin did not. My people were head people; my husband's people were earth people. One of my favorite pictures that passed down through the ages to us is of my husband's sister with their father on top of Grandfather Mountain and a note to her father in her handwriting "Thank you for teaching me to love many things."

Discovering and celebrating the grandeur of God is one of the greatest sources of healing I know. When the world seems to be caving in and people and things disappoint, I don't have to look far to see God in Creation and be reminded of God's magnificence, omnipotence and mighty power. Whether it be towering oaks or powerful water, mountain landforms that rise above the horizon or hawks and heron soaring in the sky, the presence of God is palpable and soothing.

Because of God's everlasting ever present existence in Creation, I find it difficult to use a masculine pronoun for God. We do not use gender pronouns for the trees, the mountains, the flowers or the oceans and rivers. Why then would we limit God to male? The greatest truth of all for me is that God is greater and more magnificent than man or woman and cannot possibly be full understood or filed into a human category. Jesus compared God to the maternal in Creation ("How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...")

There are times when gender pronouns might work for God...when we long for a powerful presence or long for a nurturing presence. But for the most part, I can only say God, capital G and no pronoun because there is nothing mightier in all my world, and I do not have the capacity to understand fully that Might or that Love or that Grandeur. Whoever came up with the image of God as a man with a long beard sitting on a throne did the world a great disservice!