The God who is actually there

High on the mountain, Moses is hidden in a cleft of the rock, a hand over him for shelter, because no one can see the full face of God and live. And then God passes by — and as He passes, He says His own name aloud. Not the terms a frightened man might have braced for, not a thundered list of demands or a tally of his failures. The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Of everything He could have led with, He leads with mercy. Many of us carry a very different picture, assembled from a hard church or a harder life: God as the cold inspector, the one who is never satisfied, the keeper of an account always in the red. And when that picture finally cracks under the weight of some upheaval, it can feel like God Himself is dying. He is not. The cracking of a false face is the chance, at last, to hear the real One say His own name — and to discover that mercy was always written there first.

The god who fell apart in your upheaval may have been a distortion from the beginning — harsh, withholding, impossible to satisfy, pieced together from old wounds and worse teaching. If so, then losing him is not the catastrophe it feels like. It is not the loss of God at all; it is the clearing away of a counterfeit so the true One can finally be seen. And the true One has not left you to guess at His character. He stood and spoke His own name into the air: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with steadfast love. Let Him tell you who He is, rather than trusting the grim portrait you inherited from people who got Him wrong. You are not required to keep worshiping a God who was never there. The real One is kinder than the false one ever let you imagine, and He says so first, before anything else, with His own voice.