Knowing God

What does it mean to really know God? I don’t mean the by-still-waters knowing, of knowing God as comfortor. And I don’t necessarily mean the calm-after-the-storm knowing that God is, and is regardless of what goes on in our little lives… although I am deeply grateful for both kinds of knowing. But there is more to the experience of the numinous than comfort and peace, and that’s where I find myself missing. We think of God as comforter, and he is, but that is not all he is. We create art with God, Christ, and angels covered in flowers and looking very serene. And yet, when the ancients encountered God, it was not a serene experience. It was not peaceful, or even comforting. This is what I want to know. Isaiah had a vision of the Lord, and his first response was

“Woe is me, for I am undone!”

What would it mean to know God, beyond his Otherness, as one who is so Ferociously Other that only divine intervention enables standing in the face of it? This has to be the knowledge behind the God who is a consuming fire, the jealous God, the one Israel was afraid to speak to. What if, for just a moment, I experienced God as the fierce cosmic warrior? What if I could live in the burning? I’ve been praying for that lately, but I find myself praying it alternately as something I desperately desire and yet am fearful of. Such things are not without cost, but so it is with anything worth having. I want to know God… and for once, to know him in spite of my preconceptions rather than in light of them.  Let me be undone!