“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” – Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
I love Jesus. I don’t have warm fuzzy feeling for him, and I no longer have fanciful thoughts of a groom coming for his bride, despite the clear imagery of the Bible. I love God more in my head than with my emotions. The older I get and the longer I walk with Jesus, the bigger God appears and the greater the depth of my love for him grows.
God as Father is protector, teacher, comforter and leader. As a child, my love for my own father made this image instantly understandable. God, who literally hung the moon and the stars in the sky, was Father. He has authority over the lives of his children, but not like the benevolent dictator that so many people falsely attach to his image. God is love; he is good. Like the great Aslan I read about as a child, God was secure even if he was not “safe.”
“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” – The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Jesus as Bridegroom has chosen to make an external covenant with a people he loves. He has chosen me. As a teenager, who was a bit boy crazy, I loved this illustration. To be cherished and chosen by the Prince of Peace was the thing of fairytales. I romanticized God and much of my relationship back then was emotional.
As an adult, the images of Father, Mother Hen, and Bridegroom take on an entirely new depth. Stepping into the role of parent, I more fully grasped the sacrificial love of God. Parents understand new depths of pain as you see your child struggle and hurt and when you feel the sting of your child’s rejection in big and small ways. When your own kids begin dating, you start seeing ever new boyfriend or girlfriend in a way that makes you ask, “Is this the right partner for my child?” When they walk leave their childhood home, choosing romantic love over paternal love, you wonder if you will you be able to celebrate without reservations?
But for some of us, we move one step beyond those images. For some of us, we see God as a father who watched the death of his beloved son. For some of us we understand a different kind of sorrow, and we see deeper into the heart of God. We get a taste for the suffering of the Father while Jesus hung upon the cross. We yearn for heaven where every tear is wiped away.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”- Revelation 21:4
Growing up and getting married, love and loss, parenting and life have all shown me just how big God is. How do we reconcile all that God is and all that this world is not? Can God exist? Can He be good? Can He heal? Can He know me and love me in my brokenness and sin?
We wrestle with God through our pain and we embrace him in our joy, and that is when we know he must exist. We lean into him when we have no strength, and we find that he is strong and secure. We lash out and scream and cry. We accuse Him, question Him, and even at time berate Him, and that is when we discover that He is patient, forgiving, loving, and bigger than we can wrap our minds around.
God in His wisdom gives us living illustrations of Himself in this wold. He does so in Daddies and babies, in first loves and wedding days. He does this in majestic mountains, and vast oceans. He does this is grief, and loss. He does is in the arms of a husband holding his sobbing wife, and in the first wet kisses a child given to his mother. God gives us daughters to give away in marriage and children who rebel against our parental authority. He makes himself known in the intimacy of sex, the scent of warm chocolate chip cookies, and the saltiness of tears.
This world has an abundance of grief and sorrow. As sorrows are laid upon sorrows, and the weight at times becomes too much to bear, God, who grows bigger with every tear, proves himself to be always more than we need. He bears not only our burdens; he bears us.
If God could not bear my despair, then he couldn’t bear me.”- Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan