A Note From Tom: September 16th, 2011

Hey, everyone!

Wow! What an awesome, crisp, fresh morning!! Personally, I’m “on a roll” of ‘em! We went up in the Smokies camping for a coupla days and it’s always crispy up there! I don’t know if y’all know this, but…camping rocks! Including the rocks in your shoes! I just have to admit it…I’d never really been camping til this summer. This time we stayed TWO nights! Cooking outside!…washing dishes outside!…taking your ice cold bath outside!…goin’ to the…well,…outside!...It’s the greatest thing since indoor plumbing!

One thing about camping is that things are a lot simpler than I thought they’d be!

Like, I thought you’d have to start fires by clanging those sparky rocks together. Nope! The folks we went with just pile some wood you get at the office in the cast iron fire place, splash half a bottle of lighter fluid, followed by a lit match…Voila’!

“What if you (we) run out of milk or somethin’?”

I’m thinking you chase a goat and you milk it while I hold it. Soooooo  much easier than that!

“We could just get in our cars, go down the road to Gatlinburg and buy some.”

“What?! They have grocery stores up here? There’s one in Gatlinburg?!”

I love it when answers are simpler than I thought.

The other day, I was reading my favorite blog. It’s called
Hmmm & Hum”. You can find it at leeyounger.com (Yes! That one!)

A girl from some other state asked Lee (he gets questions from around our globe!)…

“Is it possible to describe God with human language? Is there some word or variation of multiple words that give him justice? I feel as though human language will always be misleading and once we think we have found an accurate description of God, it’s not God who we are describing because we will never know everything there is to know about Him…What are your thoughts?”

“Yikes! What would I say? That’s a tough one! How could I answer this complicated question in a way that’s not too complicated?”

Lee’s answer?

“Wow. Cool question… and dang, well said. So much of what you’re bringing to the table here about God is so true! We are just little finite people made of dust - how could we ever hope to understand who God is? I mean, He’s eternal and infinite and perfect and possesses limitless power and knowledge that’s boundless! He is all the things we aren’t, so how could we ever really understand Him… much less, describe Him?! …And without perfect understanding, we can’t truly explain or describe who He is. Except for one little word…Jesus.

 Jesus is the reason that we can know God. He’s the reason we can know what God is like and can be confident that when we explain God, we’re on the real thing. Jesus came that we might know who God is. Jesus came to show us the heart of the Father. Jesus came to explain what God is like and show us how He loves. In Colossians 1, Paul said that Jesus is “the visible expression of the invisible God.” In other words, when you look at Jesus and you see Him loving the poor, the hurting, the broken and the rejected, you can know that God is like that. When you look at Jesus and you see Him respecting women in a society that oppressed them, you can know that God is like that. When you look at Jesus and you see His power over weather and diseases and demons and human authority, you can know that God’s power is like that. When you see Jesus embracing and exalting children and weeping over the pain of death and loss, you can know that God is just like that. Jesus was and is Almighty God who came down here so that we could understand Him. God didn’t just want us to be able to wrap our minds around Him, He wanted us to wrap our arms around Him… to touch Him and know Him.

I love your question, and I’m glad to tell you that the answer to it is really just one little word: Jesus.”

Ahhhh! Simple!