the mountain with the cloud at the top

 

“God is a mountain with a cloud at the top. You can see the foot of the mountain—what He does—but you cannot see the top of the mountain—what He looks like.”     - Jewish description of God

My contemporary Western mind wants to know God by seeing Him. I want to know what He looks like, to be able to touch Him and feel Him near me. By default, that is my vision of walking in intimacy with Him.

But God does not reveal His appearance to me, and it’s frustrating; it feels like He doesn’t even really want me to know Him. He is described only loosely in the Bible, in terms like “feet of burnished bronze” which really doesn’t resonate with my imagination. His face is shrouded in a cloud of unknowns. I don’t even know what the human Jesus looked like when He walked on earth, let alone what He looks like in glory! Why does He have to make it so complicated?

But He doesn’t. There is a reason that my favorite passage in the whole Bible is the following:

Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.     - Jeremiah 9:23-24

I am a Westerner, and I have been taught that my individuality is a measure of my worth. I am a Westerner, and I have been convinced that my appearance is everything: Heaven forbid that I’m too fat or too thin, wear too much makeup or too little, or have to wear the same outfit to church twice in a row. I am a Westerner, and my first impression of you will be based on what you look like, because I have been culturally shaped to believe that the face is an honest indicator of which kind of people are “likable.”

I am a Westerner, and the health of my relationships is heavily based on the physical presence and the emotional quality of the time I spend with others—not so much the record of the nice things they’ve done for me.

But God wrote the Scriptures to an Eastern people . . . a people that did not need to see Him as long as they could see Him work. He did not need to come wearing robes of purple and scarlet to make the statement, “I am the LORD” to the nation of Israel; He needed only to point to His track record: “I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth.” He did not need to show Israel His faithfulness by giving her His physical presence—what He has done for her throughout history is adequate: “‘Therefore behold, the days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when they will no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them’” (Jeremiah 23:7-8).

God is a mountain with a cloud at the top. He doesn’t show me what He looks like, because I don’t need to see His face in order to see His hand faithfully at work, or in order to walk assured in His love for me. He is, after all, the LORD, who called me to be a disciple at a very young age. He is the LORD, who paid my debt of sin. He is the LORD, who brought me through the many hardships and fears that came with going to Bible school far away from home. He is the LORD, who has asked me to do seemingly scary things only to show me that they were so very worth the risk.

And with this I can paint a picture, not of what He looks like, but of who He is. That, I think, is far more important, for as He said: “Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD.”