Who Is God?

From My Journal
November 29, 2011

I have been thinking about who God is. I mean who God IS, not descriptors like “Creator,” “Judge,” “Almighty,” but WHO is God?
   
I have been thinking about it for a couple of days now, and it has been the filter of everything I was seeing, doing, experiencing, but I still wasn’t seeing anything substantial. And that’s okay because this is prayer, and prayer is friendship, and friendship takes time. So there is nothing to rush and there is no result to be achieved.
   
And I was texting my friend, who has a brain tumor, and telling her about my search for who God is, and helping her with her own search. And I told her that maybe she just needs to come out and ask God to tell her who he is; and it seemed like good advice for myself, so I decided I needed to ask it.
   
But I had a fear in asking: I had this fear that if I asked God to show me who he is, he’d suddenly give me a heart attack or something and say “That’s who I am.”
   
So the first thing I had to do in asking who God is was to find the faith that God can show me who he is without harming me in the process �" the faith that God wants me to know him. So I mustered up the courage and asked God to show me who he is, and went back to reading.
   
I was in an empty classroom in Pennsville Middle School, looking at rows of empty desks. And I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling that each one of those empty desks represents so much promise and potential. It was like I could feel the promise and potential radiating from the desks and fill the room. And I could see that when the students sat at the desk, they become imbued and filled with that promise, that potential. And I saw that every one of them was worthy of it. That it didn't matter who they were or where they came from, they were worthy. It was theirs to use if they wanted.
   
I can’t explain it because it was a feeling and not a thought; but I knew at that moment that who God is, is promise in the ordinary, a simple mundane potential. And I knew that if I could see the potential and promise in anything or anyone, then I could see God.
   
Learning to see God in my life is learning to see the potential and promise in life.

That’s who God is.