Monday food for Thought–Yahweh by Frederick Buechner

YAHWEH IS ONE OF GOD’S NAMES, and Moses was the first one he told it to. Maybe it means “I am what I am” or something along those lines, and maybe it doesn’t. At other places in the Bible he is given names like Elohim, El Shaddai, and the Lord. Jesus called him mainly Abba, which is Aramaic for “father.” Yahweh doesn’t seem to care too much what people call him as long as the lines of communication are kept open.

He “inhabits eternity,” says the prophet Isaiah (57:15). That means before there was anything, he was, and long after there’s nothing much left, he still will be. But you can’t apply tenses like was or will be to Yahweh literally any more than you can apply the names of colors literally to the sounds of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards playing “Amazing Grace.” He doesn’t inhabit time like everybody else. He invented time.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me,” says Psalm 139 (vv. 9-10), which means that any place you can possibly think of is a place where Yahweh is because there’s no place you can possibly think of that’s a place where Yahweh isn’t. He no more exists in space than Norman Rockwell exists in the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. Space is the canvas he paints creation on.

But all this doesn’t mean for one second that he doesn’t keep on turning up in time and space anyway….

Read it all (this is quoted in the sermon posted as the entry before this).


Posted in Theology, Theology: Scripture