Learning a new name

I remember a church classroom when I was a young teenager. Hanging on the wall was a poster listing many of the names of God. Different names of God were in various fonts and sizes. Obviously, some were going to draw your eye more than others.

I have heard many sermons on the names or the attributes of God. We are wise to study how God describes Himself if we want to know Him. But maybe, you are like me—maybe some of those parts of God draw your eye more than others.

There are many Hebrew names for God that are some version of El, Eloch, Elohim (which can be translated  “power”) with a second part added to describe a particular attribute of God. God the Creator, God of Peace, God the Provider, God the Healer, God of Justice, God of the Beginning, God of Forgiveness, God of Heights, God who is Near, God of my Strength, God of my Praise, God of my Salvation, God of Truth, God of Eternity, God of Knowledge, God of Heaven and Earth, God who Sees, God who is There, Living God, Holy God, God of gods.

As you read quickly through this list, I imagine a few of these descriptions tug at your heart while a few feel like just words.

As I approached my twenties, (when I knew absolutely everything) I did some reading of “classical” Christian authors. I noticed that in the hymns and  teachings of our brothers from hundreds of years ago there was a much greater emphasis on the sovereignty, awe, might, wrath, justice, and power of God. This contrasted deeply with what the brothers in my time and place were singing and talking about: the gentleness, grace, friendship, care, and comfort of God. Now, I would have confidently answered you that all of those attributes describe God, that He Was and Is all of those things in perfect measure.  Which is the proper “Sunday school answer” and legitimately what my mind believed. But at some unspoken level, I think there was also a part of me that, while not quite able to describe it, felt that those parts of God’s nature so emphasized by historical Christians, was somehow a more primitive view of God. That we, in this modern enlightened time had built on the understandings of those that had come before to know God more personally, more intimately, more fully—and that is why we spend our time singing Him love songs more often than trembling in awe of Him.

And then I wasn’t 20 anymore.  More of life happened. There were all the difficulties and trials that come with the years. I met and loved people from a wider range of backgrounds and learned about their troubles and learned from the many different ways I saw them respond. I lived in some difficult places, places including Nicaragua, where the trials of life aren’t merely internal stresses but physical survival.

And then I lost my daughter.

And my heart was broken in new ways I never imagined.

And I am learning how helpless I am— I can’t change what has happened. I can’t take away the pain my family is feeling. I can’t survive this on my own.

And I am learning why people from very difficult places and very difficult time periods have cried out to the Powerful One.   Living so many years with the deceptive veil of my own agency over my eyes, I never had to confront my need for a sovereign God. Living so many years verbally acknowledging God, but subconsciously believing my own actions are responsible for the situation of my life. Living so many years where it was within my power to choose the temperature of a room, the food I will eat, where I will go, who I will be with, what I will wear, if I’d prefer it to be light or dark…everything about my environment seemed to be with my power. It was so easy to ignore the part of God that is in control of everything and assume I am that part. It was so easy for my understanding of God to be limited to the parts I want Him to be.

But someone living in a plastic shack with their family of 5, is aware every time it rains that they are not in control. Someone watching their neighborhood succumb to war, knows that they are powerless to create the environment they dream of. Someone using all the money they have to buy food for today, without knowing what tomorrow will bring, knows that need to rely on more than themselves. And someone burying their little girl begins to understand how completely helpless each of us. 

I am learning that those verses that seemed like “such a downer” to my younger self, are in fact sources of hope. I am learning that the “negative bits” of passages I previously read quickly past, are the parts that might bring peace. 

Singing to some celestial buddy seems somehow hollow when you are sitting helpless in a nightmare that you can do nothing about. In circumstances so dark that all you want is some glimmer of escape, calling upon a God whose mysterious power is far above this dark world connects, even if only briefly, to a shattered heart.

I begin to feel a little closer to my brothers and sisters who have cried out with Faith through difficulties beyond my imagining. Who worshiped with words that I wish I didn’t, but am learning to understand.

“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;

the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;

earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see. 
O Lord who changes not, abide with me.

I need your presence every passing hour.
What but your grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like yourself my guide and strength can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

I fear no foe with you at hand to bless,
though ills have weight, and tears their bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, your victory?
I triumph still if you abide with me.

Hold now your Word before my closing eyes.
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. 
--Henry Lyte