My God!

Read Psalm 63 this morning and didn't make it past the first half of the first line before having a thought to share. Here's the text: "O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You;" (NKJV)

The point for consideration is this: what a privilege it is to be able to say, "O God" and what a different thing it is altogether to be able to say "You are my God!" In fact, four times in Psalms does David juxtapose these two, most notably in Psalm 43:4, "Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And on the harp I will praise You, O God, my God." All of these references are in the context of praise and most are in direct connection to the sanctuary, God's dwelling place and also the place where, on earth, these two expressions merge into one: "O God" and "My God." (The remaining two of the four are in Psalm 68:24 and 71:12.)

These two expressions feature the two most impressive dimensions of God's character. First, that He simply IS and as such is THE AUTHOR of all things. Genesis 1:1 makes no apologies for the existence of God, nor does it try to explain it or, more impossibly, Him. But His very nature throughout Genesis 1 is encapsulated in the divine name employed by Moses: "Elohim." This is a reflection of the omnipotent, the majestic, the completely other. It is God in the plural or rather the divine plural as He is everywhere all the time and is Himself three-in-one. It is the name employed by the Genesis chronicler when God declares, "Let us make man in Our image" and indeed He made us plural as well, "male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:27)

And so is hinted that even in the ultimately transcendent nature of God there is relationship. Such didn't arise merely when God had man to communicate with. God had already the perfect communion within Himself as Father, Son and Spirit. But once He does have His very nature reflected in one of His own creations, men and women, He is known by them as "Yaweh-Elohim," or "Lord God" as is employed from Genesis 2:4-25, the second telling of the creation account from the now unique perspective of life on earth.

It is this wonderful connection of transcendence and relationship that David celebrates when he pens, "Oh God, You are my God." But when one considers the corpus of the entire treasury of the Psalms, one senses that such is not taken for granted by the Psalmist. A third reference to this couplet occurs in Psalm 71:12 where David exclaims, "O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!" We want God near us, but the very God we need in such times is the All Powerful and Majestic, who can not only draw near, but truly help in every circumstance.

As Mr. Beaver admonishes Lucy in their approach to Aslan's throne, "Safe? Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you." So we also want both a safe and an un-safe God. One bigger than everything in the universe, yet One who is a friend and a helper to us: "Oh God, You are my God!"

Thanks to David Shore's blog entry, Your God is Too Safe, from whence I copied the C.S. Lewis quote.