Devotional:

Isaiah 40.25

To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? Says the Holy One.

We live in the land of similes. No matter who we are, and no matter what we do, our days are filled with seemingly endless comparisons. We hear people say things like “My husband is like a couch potato” or “Baby you’re as bright as a firework” or “Ogres are like onions.” A simile is any figure of speech that describes an object, or action, in a way that isn’t literally true, however it conveys something we can understand through comparisons.

In the realm of the church, we use metaphors for God all the time, and the practice is problematic.

Just type, “God is like…” into a Google search bar and you’ll find all sorts of things. God is like oxygen, the sun, a lion, the wind, wifi, a mother hen, santa claus, a gps, an umbrella… And of course there are ways in which God is like those things, but at the same time God is totally unlike those things.

The prophet Isaiah knew the challenge of making comparisons to unravel the truth of God’s identity. The people, in some ways, were blind to what God had done, because they forgot that God was the author of all things. And instead of experiencing God as totally other, they were elevating people and objects in their lives to be equated with the realm of the divine.

We, of course, do this today as well. We circle around our televisions and computers to catch up on the latest celebrity craze, and political drama. We make finite people and experience into more than they really are. And when we want to figure our what God is like, we use earthly comparisons like the sun, the wind, and even wifi.

And here is the beauty of the incarnation; God is at once exactly like us, and totally different from us. God in Christ is both human and divine. God is paradox, unreachable and yet experiential. There is nothing we can compare God to, however God chose to take on flesh and dwell among us such that we can know God’s character. God is beyond anything we can possibly imagine, and at the same time God is in the bread we break at the table. God’s understanding is unsearchable, and at the same time God reveals God’s identity to us in the waters of baptism.

And so Isaiah can say, with paradoxical certainty: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faith and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint.”