Recognizing God
I flew to India, a land I’d never visited, and arrived at the Bengaluru airport after midnight. Though there’d been a flurry of emails, I didn’t know who was picking me up or where I should meet him. I followed the streaming mass of humanity to the baggage claim and customs, then out into the sticky night where I tried to spot a pair of friendly eyes among the sea of faces. For an hour, I walked back and forth in front of the crowd, hoping someone would recognize me. A kind man finally approached. “Are you Winn?” he asked. “I’m so sorry. I thought I’d recognize you, and you kept walking in front of me—but you didn’t look how I expected.”
We regularly get confused and fail to recognize people or places we should know. God provides an unmistakable way of recognizing Him, however. He arrived in our world as Jesus, who “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). Christ is God’s exact representation. When we see Him, we have complete confidence that we’re seeing God.
If we want to know what God is like—what He would say, how He would love—then we need only look and listen to Jesus. Are we truly hearing what “[God] has spoken” (v. 2) through Him? Are we actually following His truth? To be sure that we know how to recognize God, we fix our gaze on the Son and learn from Him.
By Winn Collier- Daily Bread Ministries
Hebrews 1:1-4 (NIV)
God’s Final Word: His Son
1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4 So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.
