What is God like?

Perhaps I should begin by dealing with what God is not like. When I was a child the minister of my church told us that God was not an old man with a beard and he was not like a policeman, ready to pounce when we did wrong.

Although the Old Testament abounds with God declaring what punishments he will bring down on people I do not believe he is a vengeful God either. I was introduced at an early age to the expression "God fearing" and I can say that I do not fear God. One day when Sunday School was ended I went into a sweets shop in Manchester Road, Nelson, Lancashire and bought some sweets. As I emerged from the shop an old lady told me that God would not love me if I bought sweets on a Sunday. Well, in today's Sunday shopping culture, very many people would find that God did not love them.

I grew up during an age in which we were often told that a Christian did not do this and that. It was always about what a Christian did NOT do. Nothing was said about what a Christian SHOULD do. I remember, at that time, thinking that I never heard a list that told me what a Christian should do.

Now that I have closed the book on the past when we thought of God in a very different way, let me deal with the positive news. God is a father to us. If you wish to find evidence to show what God is like then you need only read the stories of Jesus. I say this because there is real evidence of what God is like when you listen to Jesus. In Matthew's gospel, Chapter 7 we hear Jesus saying "Would any of you offer his son a stone when he asks for bread, or a snake when he asks for fish? If you, bad as you are, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him!" So here we have a picture of God as our heavenly Father. If he is a fatherly figure then we know how to speak to him. If there is something we need we would go to our father first to ask him for advice on how to get it. Our father would then give us the benefit of his knowledge and advice.

So this suggests he is a loving God because he has our best interests at heart. To be loved like that is often something not seen today in public. Yet, within our families, we have the model for how God loves us. The story of the Prodigal Son tells us this in detail. Jesus told many parables to explain what God is like. Read them and you will get a clearer picture of what God is like.

A story is told of a clergyman who had recently lost his wife. He had decided to take passage to America to start a new life there with his young daughter. Whilst sailing on the great liner he had been asked by the captain to preach at the Sunday service on board. In so doing he had chosen to preach on the love of God. After the service he was leaning on the ship's rail and looking out across the vast ocean with his daughter at his side. She turned to him and asked, "Daddy, does God love us as much as we loved mummy?" He spoke quietly to the little girl, "Look out over that ocean. Think how deep the water is. Look up at the sky. God's love is wider than the sea and deeper than the sea. It is also higher than all that sky." The girl thought for a few seconds and then suddenly exclaimed, "How wonderful! We are right in the middle of it!"

We live our lives in the middle of chaos - in a world where humankind is anything but kind. Stories abound of earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, giant mudslides, massive tidal waves and so on. Yet, we human beings are equipped by God to deal with disasters and catastrophies on a grand scale. I remember hearing the news, three weeks after we were married, that a whole mountainside had moved and swallowed a school in the Welsh village of Aberfan. Many children and their teacher died. Almost an entire generation was eliminated that morning. Yet stories were told of men working tirelessly, day after day, to see if any children might be found alive. The local minister could not go to the temporary mortuary to identify his daughter because he had no one to take care of his other child. Someone volunteered to baby sit for him so that he could carry out that sad task. The volunteer was her Majesty the Queen who was visiting Aberfan that day. Others had equally dreadful tasks to perform and God gave them the strength to do it.

When we have to do things that we have dreaded for many years we are given strength by a loving, caring God. This does not mean it becomes easy. It means we get the super human strength that such an event calls for. If you wish to see the goodness of God just look at what people have found themselves capable of doing as they respond to humanitarian disasters. All of us can find the strength to carry on in difficult times by calling on God for his help.

If you want to know what God is like take a good look at those who are doing his work!