Revelation 1:7-8

“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” vs. 8

This amazing verse sums up everything that we need to know about the Divine Presence. God is the A and the Z of all existence, the beginning and the end. The old familiar hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” put it well, “…which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.” Those old words have a rhythmic quality, a mysterious trip through the past, present, and future of the verb “to be,” probably the truest way we have of describing the Indescribable. This is one of the hardest things for us to “get” about God. We love to have an image that we can conjure up in our prayers, some concrete manifestation with substance and body. But that’s not God! The ancient Hebrews knew that and resisted any form of idolatry, referring to God as the great “I AM,” the Ground of All Being. That difficulty in picturing God is one of the reasons so many of us are drawn to Jesus. Because he is God Incarnate, we often address our prayers to him, and speak of our endings as our being drawn into his loving arms. It’s in Jesus that we get the best sense of God’s unconditional and sacrificial love–and it’s good to know that that love has been there in our beginning and will be there as we draw our final breath. God is the Alpha and the Omega!

Thought for the Day: What’s my favorite old hymn?