She learned to say it before she could tie a shoe, and she has said it every day since, and there are eighty one of those years now.
Father. In the pew as a girl with her legs not reaching the floor. Over four children at four bedsides at four different hours of four different nights. In a hospital corridor in 1979 that she still cannot walk past the memory of. At a graveside in 2011 when the wind took most of the words.
It is a true name. Jesus gave it. She has never had a moment's doubt about it and she is not having one now.
Here is what happened in June, and it was so small that she has not mentioned it.
Her great granddaughter, who is nine, was on the rug with a book of Bible stories, and she looked up and asked, out of nowhere, the way they do: "Nana, is God a boy?"
And she said, "God is not a boy or a girl, love. God is God." Which is right, and the child accepted it entirely and went back to the book.
And she sat in her chair with her hands on the arms of it and something quite strange happened in her, which was this. She thought: I have known that for eighty years and I have never once asked what it means.
Not doubted it. Known it, said it, taught it in a Sunday class in about 1962, and never once turned it over and looked underneath.
She has called Him Father for eighty one years and she has never wondered what else is in Him.
It is not that she thinks He is small. If you asked her she would say He is more than anybody can think, and she would mean it and she would be right.
It is that the wondering never happened. There was a name and it worked, and the years went on, and a woman with four children and a husband with a bad chest does not sit about turning God over. And then one day she is eighty one and a child on a rug asks a plain question, and the answer comes out of her correct and unexamined, like a coin that has been in a drawer so long nobody has looked at the date.
You know the drawer. Yours may hold a different coin. But you know what it is to hold something true for decades and to have never once turned it over in your hand.
What the child was told, and what it opens
Let me name the pit before we go to the book, because at eighty one nobody needs a rebuke and this is not one.
The pit is not error. What you told that child is exactly right and I would not change a word of it. The pit is that a correct sentence can sit in a person for eighty years without ever being followed anywhere, and a sentence that is never followed does not feed anybody. You have been living off one true name and one true doctrine, and both of them are true, and neither of them has been opened since about 1946.
Here is the verse the child's question walks straight into.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.Genesis 1:27
Read what it does with the two of them.
One image, and it took a man and a woman together to carry it. Not half each. Both, imaging one God, which means everything good in a man and everything good in a woman came down out of the same place before either of them had it.
Now the line, and I put it in the same breath because this ground does not teach the one without the other. God is neither male nor female. He is spirit, and Numbers 23:19 says plainly that God is not a man. Genesis 1:27 does not make God part male and part female and it does not give Him a feminine side. It says the image of one undivided God who is neither took two kinds of human being to represent in the world.
Take that in your own chair, and know it is not me being kind to an old woman, it is what the verse says. Everything tender you have ever been to anybody came out of Him first. Genesis 1:27 puts the whole image in one God, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a truth like that arrive somewhere new in a woman who has agreed with it since Attlee was prime minister.
And Scripture does not leave it for you to work out. It says the other half in God's own voice.
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.Isaiah 66:13
He chose that. Nobody suggested it to Him. And the boundary is exactly where it was: that is a simile God selected to describe Himself, it does not make Him a mother, He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the picture stays in the shape He gave it.
You have used one true name for eighty one years, and the same God has been the whole of Himself the entire time. I am not adding anything to your faith; I am telling you what is in the book you have carried since the pew with your legs not reaching the floor, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the opening.
Nobody put a lock on anything.
You are eighty years into something real, and you have not been given a smaller God than the one who is actually there. Genesis 1:27 says the image He made carries male and female both, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens what a lifetime of one name has kept unopened, and He is not offended by a question asked this late.
That is the whole of it, and it is the reason this is not a sad article. You have not been kept out. Nothing was hidden. There is no fault here, and there is nobody to be cross with, and at eighty one you are certainly not going to start being cross with yourself about it, and I would not let you.
There was a name that worked, and four children, and a husband with a bad chest, and the years did what years do.
So do the wondering now. It takes about a minute and it is not too late for it, and there is nothing in Scripture anywhere that puts a closing date on a person finding out more about God.
Ask Him. Out loud, on your own, in the chair. What else is in You.
You are made in the image of a God who is neither male nor female, and the half you never went looking for has been there since before you could tie a shoe. That is Genesis 1:27 and Isaiah 66:13 standing together, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the showing, at whatever pace suits a woman of eighty one, which is His business and not a thing you have to arrange.
And the child on the rug. She will remember what you told her. Nana, God is not a boy or a girl, God is God. That is a very good thing to have put in a nine year old and it will still be in her at seventy.
The only thing being added is that the woman who said it goes and finds out what she said.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, sitting in your own chair. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over your own life is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on how much of Him you have looked into, which is not much, and which is not held against you anywhere. These stand on what is written in Genesis and in Isaiah, carried by the Holy Spirit and not by your years. What He shows you, and when, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- Habit of never wondering, you are not reverence and you never were, and I set you down in the name of Jesus. Genesis 1:27 says male and female were both made in His image, so there is more in Him than the one name I have used, and I am allowed to go looking.
- Idea that eighty one years is too far in to be finding things out, you have no place in this front room. It is written that He comforts as one whom his mother comforteth, and He said it about Himself, and His Spirit does the showing at whatever pace suits an old woman.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female and the whole of both is in You. I read Genesis 1:27 out loud in this room today and I ask You out loud, once, what else is in You, and then I am putting the kettle on.
Genesis 1:27
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