Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant.
One blind man touched the elephant’s side and exclaimed with conviction,
Why, an elephant is like a wall!
Another, feeling the tusk disagreed. He shouted his truth:
An elephant is round and smooth and sharp.
An elephant is like a spear.
Another, trying to get hold of a writhing trunk,
Decided that an elephant is like a snake.
Another, feeling a leg and knee,
Was convinced that elephants are like trees.
No, no, no, said another who was enjoying the breeze from a flapping ear,
An elephant is like a fan.
Another, who was holding on to the tail, argued
That it was more like a rope
And still another, whose cheek felt the swish of the tail’s tuft, argued,
Elephants are like paint brushes.
Not one of us, from our limited vantage point, can grasp the whole – but we can catch glimpses and explore facets of the Most High God. When we initially respond to God and begin our journey with Him, it is usually because we have been attracted to one of His attributes. This may be because of our personalities, our strengths, our needs at the time, but this then becomes our primary picture of all that God is.
We will be in trouble if we stay there, and unfortunately many of us do. Some of His attributes we like and can relate to and some we don’t understand, don’t like and then reject altogether. Yet we know what the blind men did not know – that each of us possesses only a sliver of the truth.
God is bigger than what we can get our hearts and minds around.
He is the Most High – transcendent above all, truly receiving the Highest Honors.
This has been our first attribute to study, the fact that He is totally unique, so far beyond what we can imagine, so amazing in quality, so high and lifted up.
He is unfathomable and yet He wants to journey with us. To try to live on your own without God will lead to wrong thinking.
Does it matter? Join our quest and find out.
Excerpted from Highest Honors, Journal 1.6
Is your understanding of Him skewed because you look at Him through the prism of your own problems, struggles, experiences or situations?