How do you get to know God?
Some get to know him in a blinding flash, others find gradual illumination and many stay in the dark.
My own illumination has been through gradual flashes helped especially by holy people.
It came also through a doctorate in Chemistry researching carbon polymers. As I opened up new realms of knowledge through neutron scattering, I had a sense Someone had seen these things before.
Science works through humility so that hypotheses that get disproved are good news bringing advance. My old research field is a bit strange to me nowadays. I have been fascinated though to read recently of carbon-breathing batteries that use Aluminium to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere whilst making electricity.
How do you get to know God?
We scientists pursue truth but many of us have a sense that truth is with us and awaiting us. Reason and faith both lift us to God. Saul of Tarsus whose Conversion is the subject of our first reading originally followed a reasoned religion lacking faith. He lacked openness to the transcendent. God was in his religious books and laws so he was rattled to encounter the first Christians. They spoke of laws and indeed life itself transcended through the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
It was too much. He raged against it. But Saul was to become Paul, the reasoned man became the man of faith as heavenly light came over him on the Damascus Road. His eyes were opened to a God built less to his dimensions and more to those of God who is God!
How do you get to know God?
As God is truth you need to seek truth, but that's not enough. You need to be open to truth as something or Someone seeking you!
The best of scientists like old Archimedes get eureka moments - I see it! These moments are, like Paul’s today, a lesson in humility, that is, in disbelieving yourself so as to see something more wonderful. To get to know God – and what an awesome, joy-giving and life-enhancing business that is - you need a readiness to loosen from self preoccupation, see the big picture of reality and be put in your place!
That happened to Saul of Tarsus in a flash which really put him in his place. He was temporarily blinded, and had to be led by the hand into Damascus where he joined the very body he was persecuting. Later on Paul wrote of this in 1 Timothy 1:16 I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. Paul saw himself as the foremost of sinners since he had persecuted the very body he came to join and lead. If God can use me, he says, he can use anyone.
How do you get to know God?
On my way back from St Wilfrid’s to Bentswood I always catch a glimpse of the South Downs waiting at the traffic lights at the top of New England Road. God is before me in that grand view as much as he’s before me here in Church looking at our beautiful window of the risen Lord Jesus.
St Nicodemus who lived on Mount Athos in the 18th Century admired the grand views there. He pondered and came up with an astonishing two liner that captures what it is to be in the image of God. Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm. I repeat: Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm.
You can find God by pondering yourself, or, one step back, reflecting on what it is to reflect. As your mind and heart contain the view of the Downs from Haywards Heath, and indeed, in a thought, the whole universe, you become in a sense greater than all that is as you contain it. Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm.
God is God and always will be God. We’re made in God's image capable of his glory but that capacity isn't automatic. People miss God through two deceptions. They reason to the exclusion of faith or they believe to the exclusion of reason.
The greatest threats to peace on earth are folk who deny the transcendent and folk in possession of mindless religion. God is love and love transcends reason – it goes beyond but not against reason.
To know God who is truth you need to be drawn beyond any mental construct. You might also need freeing, as Paul was, from false and compulsive images of God.
A few ideas this morning on how you get to know God.
I want to encourage you to pray sometime, in quiet, on your own, this honest and risky prayer:
God if you're there and you love me show yourself to me. Give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to my own.
It's an honest prayer - saying 'if you're there' tames reason as it admits we can't prove God is there however strong the evidence. It's a risky prayer because you're expressing a readiness to be put right on God by God – but… God is love! It’s an ongoing prayer - you need to wait for an answer. God if you're there and you love me show yourself to me. Give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to my own.
If you already know God you’re asking for a fuller vision of him, something I find myself doing often, but not as often as I should so I’m preaching this morning at myself too.
Have a go - you won't regret it!
In Paul’s own words to Corinth, God give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4v6)
God who shone on Paul shine on us all!
[Picture of Saul’s Conversion by Caravaggio]
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