Kerstyn Desjardin wrote and performed this spoken word in the call to worship on Sunday, March 10th, the first Sunday in our series Seeing Clearly.

Ask yourself what you think of
When you think of
God.
Take a moment
And imagine.
Maybe
God is my Shepherd,
Or Our Father, who art in Heaven.
Maybe thunderbolts and lightning.
(Very very frightening.)
Maybe you just realized
You haven’t thought about
What you think about
When you think about God
For some time.

I forget to think about God sometimes.

I forget to remember
That God is nothing
I understand
Completely.
But in moments like this,
God reminds me to remember
Reminds me that there are ways
I can attempt
The impossible.
Reminds me that words have been written
To draw us closer
To Who we cannot know
By way of what we can.

God is like
A Shepherd (John 10:11, Psalm 23)
Who knows just how to find us
When we trot off
Looking for greener grass.
A Shepherd who looks kindly down on His sheep,
Who remembers the feel of the hillside
And the scent of the grass
And is patient
But stern
In our wanderings.
We serve a Shepherd who understands,
Because we serve a Shepherd
Who was also a Lamb.

God is like
A Physician (Matt 9:12, Hosea 6:1, Luke 4:40)
Who has watched us lie curled
On hard beds in cold rooms
Cut open and bleeding,
Breaths staggered, cries wracking
Our bodies with pain.
We serve Healing Hands who cup tear-stained cheeks
And raise eyes from the ground
And say
“You’re in luck.
I know just the thing.”

God is like
The Morning Sun, (Psalm 19:4-6, Malachi 4:2, Luke 1:78-79, Isaiah 9:2)
Our eyes adjusting to this
Blaze of glory
After only knowing
Darkness
For so long,
The promise that even the longest night
Is never
Neverending.
God is the light
That breaks through the night
When we thought day would never come.
Morning after morning rising,
Persisting in patient promise
Proving the whispers
Of death in the darkness
Wrong
Again.

God is like
The Shade in the heat of the day. (Psalm 121:5-6, Isaiah 24:4)
In the blistering blaze of
Our trudge through the desert,
We serve the shadow
In the cleft of the rock.
We serve the Safe Place
To check in
And check out
From a world
That has us dripping sweat
And dropping to our knees.

God is like
A Laboring Mother (Isaiah 42:14)
Who saw a world in need of saving,
Who knew that our new life could not
Be brought forth
From nothing.
A Mother desperate to hold her child
Again,
Hands and knees
Gasps and groans
Gritted teeth and endless strength
Delivering forth
Her justice
Into the world.

And in the stillness
Of the after,
Unbelievably, undeniably,
God is like
A Nursing Mother, (Isaiah 49:15)
Who radiates compassion
And holds us to her heart
And whispers promises,
That no distance could separate,
No time could make her forget
That labor
Of love
For us.

God is like a-
God is like a-
What can possibly come next?
What can any person say
To succinctly sum up
Something like “God”?
Nothing will ever make God
Make sense.

I nearly wrote,
“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

But, no.
I’m not sorry for that.
I would never have us seek
A sensible God.
I would not have
Our Shelter-Shepherd
Father-Fire
Mother-Medic
Lover-Lamb
Be boiled down
To anything
We could define
In the dictionary.

I would rather be still and know
That this God
I can’t know
Still wishes to be known
By me.
That the God who does not need me
Wants me
Warms me
Hears me
Heals me
Bears me
Shepherds me
Shades me
And promises me that one day
I will know
As I am known