March 2010

The Reverend Philip Banks writes:

Images of God

What is your image of God? In CS Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, as the children begin to discover more about the character of Aslan, the Beavers point out that he is not at all ordinary and that he is in fact a Lion! This fills them with fear, and they ask “Is he safe?” - to which the reply is “… safe? Of course he’s not safe. But he’s good! He’s the King!”

I am sure that many people, me included, sometimes turn God into something or someone ‘safe’. We have an image of God that is wonderfully comfortable – for there are indeed times, when all around us is tough or cold, that we need the comfort and reassurance that we are loved and cherished by God. But if our image of God is only a ‘comfortable’ one, we can lose a sense of the awesome wonder of the creator of all that there is – ‘a lion, huge shaggy and bright’.

Jill Rowe, one of the directors of the Oasis Trust (a significant Christian social action trust), says that we can create for ourselves an “image of God that is so comfortable that he becomes exactly what we want him to be like. Yet we all know that, deep down, we are meant to march to a different rhythm - the one set by the helpless babe who called us to be people who love others so much that we would lay down our lives for them, just as he did.”  (www.oasisuk.org).

Such a challenge is indeed a very tall order for most of us. And it sounds decidedly un-comfortable! For aligning yourself to this kind of life is bound to be painful, sometimes risky and certainly uncomfortable. Yet St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, says “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1).

So – what is your image of God? Is it different now to what it was when you were a child? And, if so, what experiences of life have changed that image? We are now firmly in the season of Lent – a good time for reflection on what our image of God is. Indeed, to work at the discovery of who God is, what God is doing, and what God asks of us, is one of the most important and enriching things that we can engage in as Christians – and I hope that our guest Sunday Lent preachers, together with our Monday Lent lectures, will help us to discover some of these things of God, and to know and follow his purposes for our lives.

With my prayers and every blessing to you this Lent and coming Easter.

Fr. Philip

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