O Lord our God,
You are a
fascinating God. Mystery surrounds so much of who You are. You tell us that You
are one God, the true and living God. And yet, You also tell us that You are,
at the same time, three - Father, Son and Spirit. You are above time, watching
all of it at once. That means that there is no before or after for You. It's
all now. You also tell us that You don't change. You don't change what You
think or what You do or anything. You tell us that it's impossible for You to
change. And on top of all of that, You have no beginning and no end. We
understand no end. You have made us immortal. We will never end. Every person
will live, somewhere, forever. But we have no idea of what it means to have no
beginning. Everything we know, or everything else that we know, has a
beginning. But not You. How do You do that?
Lord God, there is
so much about You that we do not understand. And that actually makes sense.
There are certain aspects of who You are that we will never understand. And
yet, there are aspects of who You are that we actually could understand so much
better, but don't. And that's why we have such small notions of who You are and
what You can do - which is why we have such small expectations of You.
And so, Lord God, we
have some requests of You. We ask, first, that You would forgive us for our
lack of understanding of who You are. Not for the things that we could never
understand, but for the things that we could understand but don't work at
understanding. You have made us so that we would know You, and know You well.
But we are distracted by other pursuits. We have no excuse. Nature itself is
filled with the wonder of who You are. And then, there is all that Scripture
explains. With all this wealth before us, we don't work to understand You very
well and that is not at all good. Please forgive us.
We also ask You to
change all of that so that we would understand You. We're not asking for some
immediate magical change that fills us with information that we don't currently
have. No, instead we ask that You would give us a hunger to understand You more
deeply. There are, to be sure, aspects of who You are that we will never
comprehend. But that still leaves much about You that actually is quite
available to us. Grant to us the yearning to know better, to know more
profoundly, these things about You. We ask for this, Lord God, because this is
why You created us, to understand and to enjoy You, our Creator; to understand
and to enjoy You, our Redeemer. Grant to us this hunger which will result in
our doing more to consider the mysteries of who You are. As we do that, our
lives, our priorities, our desires, what we love and what we hate - all of that
will change. We will come to understand You better. And because of that we will
glorify You in the ways that You created us to glorify You. That would be
heavenly. So, please grant this request as we offer it up to You through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.