Our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:29.

Here are three important statements about God from very diverse sources: God is still the God who evokes reverence and awe. It is a distorted Christianity which in the midst of the joy of the heavenly journey forgets the awe and the dread… ‘Our God is a consuming fire’. (Michael Ramsay, Be Still and Know).

‘The self we love is not the self God loves, the neighbours we do not prize are his treasures, the truth we ignore is the truth he maintains, the justice we seek because it is our own is not the justice that his love desires. The righteousness he demands and gives is not our righteousness but greater and different. He requires of us the sacrifice of all we would conserve and grants us gifts we had not dreamed of.’ (H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation).

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. (John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman).

Lord, may I give you the same place in my heart that you have in the universe. Amen.