There are so many people out there who want to tell you about how pure and high God is, and still more who want to tell you about how loving God is. You know, the thing I really appreciate about God is not that he is holy, nor that he is dear - but that he is holy AND dear. He is high and pure and all that a God should be, yet he's never too stuffy to come near and hold out a warm hand when I'm fed up or lonely.
What would I do in this howling wilderness of a world without such a Friend?
I don't care whether it can be explained or not. He is every bit of the beauty that I know. He is all the richness, all the deep, mysterious wonder, all the warm, thrumming energy, all the loveliness that I know. Only in him my weary, bone-tired, self-seeking, self-berating soul finds rest from its endless trying to be; only in him I find fluttering warmth and spreading peace.
His name - God - has been mustied and muffled and garishly painted over: but He remains. What are the theses I have been offered in that Dear One's place? Beside Him, the vast sweep of philosophy and the measured step of science and the unfurled banners of ancient history and the colored skein of modernity are but mutterings and platitudes, after all. All their promised textures; treasures; sapience, drawn out, are paper and shadows. In all that I have sought and seen, there is nothing that compares with Him.
You may have the visions and the miracles, the blessings and the wonders and the signs. Keep the great cathedrals and the stirring hymns and the flowing robes. Take the inspirational poems and the well-expounded sermons and the bullet-proof apologetics. Call me naive and deluded. Call me a reactionary and a romantic. Call me a fool, a fanatic, a Jesus-freak.
How I love him - my Father and My Friend.
