Colossians 1:9-12 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you… No man can take a pencil and mark the features of Jehovah, and say: "Thus far is God, and no farther." How poor a God must that be whom I can understand! He would be no larger than the measure of my thought — and that would be small indeed. No man can limit and define God. after all intellectual statements have been made, after all definitions have been given, immensely more is left untouched than has been touched. But the functions of the Divine nature, the quality of that nature and its moral essence, one may suspect or know without comprehending all of God. Bring me but a glass of water, And I know what water is. I may not know, if I have not travelled, what are the springs in the mountain, what are cascades, what are the streams that thunder through deep gorges, what are broadening rivers, what are bays, or what is the ocean; and yet I may know what water is. A drop on my finger tells me its quality. From that I know that it is not wood, that it is not rock, that it is not air, that it is not anything but water. I am not able, by searching, to find out God unto perfection; and yet I know that, so far as I have found Him out, and so far as He is ever going to be found out, whatever there is in nobility, whatever there is in goodness, whatever there is in sweetness, whatever there is in patience; whatever can be revealed by the cradle, by the crib, by the couch, by the table; whatever there is in household love and in other loves; whatever there is in heroism among men; whatever there is of good report; whatever has been achieved by imagination or by reason; whatever separates man from the brute beast, and lifts him above the clod — I know that all these elements belong to God, the eternal and universal Father. Although I may not be able to draw an encyclopaediac circle and say: "All inside of that is God, and anything outside of it is not God;" yet I know that everything which tends upward, that everything which sets from a lower life to a higher, that everything which leads from the basilar to the coronal, that everything whose results are good, is an interpretation of God, who, though He may be found to be other than we suppose, will be found not less, but more glorious than we suspect. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; |
    |