God's Number

When my family was all gathered around for one of our pre-Christmas meals, my four-year old nephew Wesley asked, "What's God's number?"

We tried to figure out what he meant. Phone number? No. Weight? No. With each guess he just kept saying, "No, his NUMBER."

Finally my sister had the smarts to ask, "Wesley, what's your number?"

"Four."

"So you want to know how old God is?" Wesley nodded. "God doesn't have a number, because he was never born."

Wesley accepted this answer, and we moved on. But as I was mediating recently on Psalm 93, this line from verse 2 stuck out to me: "You are from all eternity." One thing I do when I reflect on Scripture is try to picture it. The Lord reigns? Pictureable. Robed in majesty? Pictureable. Armed with strength? Pictureable. But from all eternity? It struck me how incomprehensible this truly is.

I don't know if Wesley moved on because his childlike faith just accepted the answer his mom had given him, or if he was bored since we'd taken so long to figure out what he was even asking. But I know that incomprehensible things often trip adults up in their faith. How can you believe in a God with no number? That's why the Israelites so often turned to idols. These were tangible gods they could understand completely. They had a beginning - a beginning the Israelites themselves had given!

But when I really stop to think about it, I'm glad there are things about God that we can't picture or understand. If God was small enough to fit inside my feeble brain, he wouldn't be much of a God, would he?