Pondering God (Part 25)

We are rewinding these FB posts for you on Blogger just now. Enjoy the whole month of May musings.

25 May. Continuing our study and contemplation of God. He is Holy. Don’t hang up. Really— I’m not going to make you feel too guilty, too soon. Holy is one of the most used words to remind us of the God of Israel. By translation it can mean 'separate' or 'sanctified' or 'set apart.' And by convention most people consider this word to be a religious term having to do with things we are not supposed to do. Holy people don’t smoke, right? They don’t kill or get drunk. Ok so if God is holy, he must not smoke or get drunk. 

But God is not interested in such religious appellation. 

What holy means to me is that He is other. He is not like us. The psalmist Asaph quoted the Almighty in chapter 50.
“You let your mouth loose in evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; You slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done and I kept silence; You thought that I was just like you.” (19-21)

He is other. 

His ways are not our ways.
His thoughts are not our thoughts. 

There are children in classes today who are contrary. God wants us to listen to His words and to obey. He wants us to love. To love Him and all His people. To love His creation. He wants us to be other than the spirit of the age. 

I haven’t been holy throughout my life. I have failed God over and over. I have broken His commands. And yet God says of me and us “But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light”. (1 Peter 2.9)

Out of the dark. Into the other.
Out of self-consumption into His light.
Out of living for myself to living for God. 

He will shine His light into my darknesses and expose my sins. The purpose of that shining? That I might join Him in His beauty and majestic Holiness.