O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth. [Psalm 47:1-2 (KJV)]
The Lord is great in Zion; and he is high above all the people. Let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy. [Psalm 99:2-3 (KJV)]
“He’s not a tame lion.” Anyone familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis knows to whom this sentence refers. Throughout the seven Narnia books, that same thought is expressed in various ways when describing Aslan (the Christ-like character in the series). When the Pevensie children discover that Aslan is a lion, they ask if he’s safe. “Who said anything about safe?” is the reply. “’Course he isn’t safe,” adds Mr. Beaver, “But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” A safe lion would be a tame lion because a tame lion has been trained. It’s predictable and can be managed, manipulated, controlled, and taught. Aslan, most definitely, is not tame but he is good and, at times, that fact is forgotten. Perhaps it is because, as Lewis explains: “People…sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.”
The Hebrew word describing God in the Psalms and translated as “terrible” in the King James, was yare, meaning “to be feared.” Most other modern translations use “awesome” or a similar less terrifying word. Back in the 1600s, when the King James version was first published, the type of “terror” associated with the word was a reverent fear of God. It conveyed both dread and terror as well as solemn awe and reverence—an appropriate response to a Being who is far greater and more powerful than any human could ever hope to be. When describing God (or Lewis’ lion Aslan), “terrible” means tremendous, awe-inspiring, formidable, intense, and fearsome. Our God is all that and more; what He isn’t is tame!
The children eventually understand that Aslan is intrinsically good and, because the lion is good, it doesn’t matter that he isn’t tame. The same goes for God! If we truly believe Him to be good, we can trust that everything He does is for our good. When life takes a bad turn, however, we tend to lose sight of God’s goodness and love. Forgetting that His inherent goodness and terribleness are inseparable, we allow challenging circumstances to steal our confidence in a good God. Like Aslan, God can’t be evil any more than He can be tamed.
Afraid of trusting an unpredictable, fearsome, and awesome God, we would prefer a God who is tame—one we could tell what to do along with when and how to do it. We wouldn’t need to please a tame God; He’d want to please us. He would coddle rather than challenge and beg rather than demand. A tame God would answer to us rather than hold us accountable to Him. Since a tame God would live to please our sinful nature, a tame God could not be good!
In Lewis’ books, the untamed but good lion brings the children into Narnia not to live bland or boring lives but to face foes, trials, and difficulties and become better for it. Nevertheless, they never face those challenges alone; Aslan is always there for them. In the same way, our awesome God does not call us to lead humdrum safe lives. He calls us to live far-reaching, uncompromising, purposeful, profound, and often challenging ones. Jesus told His disciples to take up their crosses and have lives of radical goodness and love; He tells us to do the same thing.
Our God is not tame, but He is good; He is untamed goodness and love!
Occasionally, I’ll spot a partially open moonflower (Ipomoea alba) during an early morning walk at the park. While the Moonflower’s cousin the Morning Glory opens wide to welcome the sunlight, the Moonflower prefers darkness. It’s only when the sun sets that it opens to a large trumpet-shaped bloom. Rather than competing during the day with brightly colored flowers for pollinators like bees and butterflies, Moonflowers enjoy pollinators like bats and moths at night. As the morning sun rises, the Moonflower again rejects the light and rolls up into itself.
After Israel accepted the Lord’s Covenant, Moses returned to the base of Mt. Sinai with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders. It was then that every one of those men gazed upon the God of Israel from afar and ate a covenant meal in His presence. Before Moses departed to climb up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, he entrusted the Israelites to Aaron and the elders who then went back to their camp. Moses, accompanied by his servant/apprentice Joshua, climbed a short way up the mountain and a cloud covered it. The two men made camp and stayed there for the next six days. On the seventh day, God called to Moses from within the cloud and the Israelites’ leader disappeared into the mist.
Built by her husband’s grandfather in the 1920s, my friend’s house was filled with much of the original furniture. Many pieces (like the restored grand piano) were valuable antiques but decades of use had taken their toll on others. Although the beautiful little mahogany side chair looked solid, a note saying “Broken—do not use” rested on it. Pretty as it was, the chair was useless and an invitation to disaster. Should the warning go unnoticed, some unknowing person could end up sprawled on the floor surrounded by splintered wood.
Jeremiah 29 consists of two letters written by the prophet to the exiles in Babylon. The first (29:1-28) was sent to the recently deported elders, priests, and prophets as well as to King Jehoiachin, his mother, and the officials, craftsmen, and artisans who’d been taken as Nebuchadnezzar’s captives several years earlier. Countering the message of the false prophets promising a quick return to Jerusalem from Babylon, Jeremiah bluntly told the exiles that Israel’s captivity would last seventy years. This was unwelcome news and, preferring to believe comforting lies rather than the painful truth, people accused Jeremiah of being crazy and a false prophet. The second letter in this chapter addresses one of his accusers.
After feeding a multitude with little more than a handful of food, Jesus sent the disciples across the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida. He stayed behind to send the people home and then, exhausted, went into the mountains to pray. During the fourth watch (somewhere between 3:00 and 6:00 AM), Jesus looked out at the water and saw that the disciples were struggling against the wind and waves to keep the boat on course. Seeing their distress, he walked on the water toward them. Seeing Him walking on water, they thought Him a ghost and cried out in terror. Phantoms of the night were said to bring disaster and it was thought that the last thing a boatman saw before drowning in Galilee was a ghost on the water! It’s no wonder they were frightened at first.
Devotions of the Heart 