...God...is...more.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea;

There’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind;

And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

---Frederick W. Faber, 1854

There is good news for us today, friends! God refuses to be restricted to the limits of our thoughts about God! What a humbling thought --- that our minds cannot conceive of the true nature of God’s mercy, grace, and provision. No matter how vast and gracious we make God in our minds, God is bigger and more loving. Even our idea of liberty as a high human and divine ideal is puny next to God’s sense of, and exercise of, justice. In a very real way, we have no idea what God is capable of!

We must be careful, I think, not to limit God to our own understanding, not to place labels on God that (by definition) will limit and diminish God’s essential nature. We would do well, I think, not to trade the limitless compassion of a mysterious God for the quantifiable allowances of a manageable god. In the end, if that is the trade we make, we miss out on so much of who God is.

 But thanks be to God! Whatever we think, feel, imagine…God…is…more.

...release God

There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness to God's justice which is more than liberty.
...
But we make God's love too narrow by false limits of our own;
and we magnify God's strictness with a zeal he will not own.
...
For the love of God is broader than the measure of our mind;
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
...
---Frederick W. Faber, 1854

What fools we are, to create God in our own petty little image, and then to submit ourselves, and each other, to this little-god's judgement and condemnation. When --- oh, God --- the world would expand to neverending-ness right away if we trusted that God was always more.

Always more. 

Always more love.

Always more kindness.

Always more acceptance.

Always more forgiveness.

If we would release God from the chains of being made in our brokedown image...and step into the blazing reality of, ourselves, being created in God's image. Imagine what we might become, what we might already be.

Always more.

Always more.