by Audrey West

"What do you call God?" the pastor asked her. Her grandmother had died, and the family had gathered with the pastor to plan the funeral. "When you pray, what do you picture God to be like?" The questions surprised her. Although nearly 20 years old, she had never before been involved in planning a funeral. She figured they would choose hymns and tell stories about Grandma so that the pastor would know what to say during the service; she did not expect a theological discussion about their images of God. Besides, she was unsure what to say. What if her picture of God was different from everybody else’s? What if it wasn’t good enough, what if it betrayed a lack of spiritual depth? Mostly, though, she was simply too sad to say anything. The only image in her mind just then was a picture of Grandma, lying in bed, hair braided and wrapped around her head like a halo.

Out of insecurity she kept quiet, but she listened as others in the family answered the question: "I call God Father," or "I just have a warm feeling when I pray," or "I think of God as a strong rock that protects me." The young woman could think only of how much she wished Grandma could be there to comfort her, and how she longed for a direct word from God so that her grief would not overwhelm her. But she heard no such word.

Soon it was time for the pastor to leave. Gathering together all of the God–images and weaving them into a prayer, Pastor asked God to protect this family in their sorrow and strengthen them for the days and weeks ahead as they learned to live in the world without their beloved grandmother. Much to the young woman’s surprise, the pastor included a petition to God the Silent One. Having never before heard God addressed in that way, she later asked about that image. The pastor explained that in a conversation, when one party is speaking, the other party is silent in order to listen. When God is silent, God is listening; it is an invitation to pray what is in our hearts.

Images of God: Where are they from?
From the opening pages of the Old Testament to the conclusion of the Book of Revelation, the Bible is filled with a variety of images for God. The early chapters of Genesis describe God through the actions of a creator–gardener. After forming the first man out of dust and planting a garden, God walks in the garden at the time of the evening breeze. In Exodus, when Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, God goes before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Deuteronomy 32:11 shows us God as an eagle spreading her wings and nurturing her young. In the New Testament, Jesus calls God "Abba, Father," even as he tells parables that depict that same father through the activity of a woman baking bread or sweeping the floor for a lost coin.

Imagine a conversation among the biblical writers, as if they were answering the question, "Who is God for you?" "God is my shepherd," the psalmist says, inviting others to respond. Hosea chimes in, "God is like a mother bear" (Hosea 13:8). The writer of 1 John advocates for "God is light" (1 John 1:5), while the author of Hebrews calls God "the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3). Nearly every writer in the canon adds something to the discussion. Noteworthy, perhaps, about this imaginary conversation is that none of the biblical writers suggests that any single image for God is the only appropriate one. Indeed, we find in some writings such a host of images that it can be difficult to reconcile them. The book of Isaiah, for instance, suggests several striking metaphors for God, such as mighty warrior and woman in labor (Isaiah 42:13–14), king (43:15), and mother who comforts her child (66:13).

Images of God: Culture and experience
The mosaic of biblical images for God testifies to the experience of God’s people, across generations and across cultures, as they have reflected on God’s activity in their lives and in the lives of their communities. When the people of God tell the story of a flight from Egypt and God’s presence during 40 years in the wilderness, they bear witness to a God who leads them, feeds them, and guides them safely home. Psalm 23 recounts similar acts of God, but states them using the image of a shepherd, who "leads me beside still water…prepares a table before me…[brings me] to dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." The psalmist’s words reflect not only the experience of the people but also the culture to which they belong, where shepherds offer a tangible metaphor for speaking about this God whom they cannot see. Jesus himself picks up this pastoral image, common to his Galilean background, when he calls himself the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11).

Centuries later, when the Italian artist Michelangelo painted his famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he depicted God as a white–bearded, grandfatherly figure, a strong and muscular man, reaching out to give life to a young man who we know to be Adam. Adam looks very much like God, only younger: physically fit and posed in a way that reflects the pose of God. If people are created in the image of God, so too is the image of God in this painting mirrored by the image of Adam, right down to his Italian features. A very different picture of the same biblical story is offered in the poem, "The Creation," by the African American scholar and poet, James Weldon Johnson (God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, Penguin Classics, 1990). Johnson portrays God "like a mammy bending over her baby," shaping a lump of clay into God’s own image. In both works — the painting and the poem — God is represented in words or pictures that are drawn from the cultural background of the artist. The same is true for the biblical writers and for us, as well. We tend to speak about God in images that reflect our backgrounds, our experiences, and the cultures of which we are a part.

Images of God: Our prayers
I learned in a workshop on prayer that life experience and the images we use for God may be intimately linked. After we learned about various forms of prayer and spiritual practices, our workshop assignment was to write a series of three short prayers, addressing God in a different image for each prayer: God as father, God as rock, God as mother. During the next week, we were to read our three prayers daily and meditate on how the ways we addressed God shaped our experience during the prayers.

At the end of the week, several workshop participants reported that it was easy to compose and pray the first two prayers, using the images of father and rock for God, because these images were familiar from church. Everyone in the group knew that Jesus had taught his disciples to pray saying "Our Father," and all had heard in the psalmody the protective strength of God as a rock and shield. The third prayer, however, in which God was addressed in the image of a mother, was much more difficult for some of the participants. They felt a great deal of dissonance in seeing one God as both father and mother, even though they knew well the statement from Genesis 1:27 that male and female are both created in God’s image.

Other participants reported a different experience. It was for them exceedingly painful to pray while addressing God as a father, because the paternal image reminded them of violence and abuse they had experienced at the hands of their own fathers. When they wrote prayers to God using maternal images, however, they were mindful of "the God who gave you birth" (Deuteronomy 32:18), the One who promises, "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you" (Isaiah 66:13). They reported feeling protected and nurtured by God, safe to express their innermost concerns in prayer.

At the end of the workshop, nearly all the participants affirmed the value of practicing new or unfamiliar images for God in order to remain attentive to the ways we shape and are shaped by our prayers. Following the example of the biblical writers, we may enrich our prayer life by drawing on multiple images as we speak and listen to God.

Multiple images, the same God
When the pastor at a funeral prays to the Silent One, she calls upon the very same God whose voice speaks the whole of creation into being. Our prayer to a Mighty King who does battle against the forces of evil is a prayer to the same One who gave up his life on a cross for us and for our enemies. God of strength, God of comfort, higher than the heavens, a warm embrace: in a particular moment, or day, or week, any one of those images may express most clearly our relationship with the God in whom we have life, our confession of the One who sustains and redeems us.

For many people, these images change over time, just as they did for the biblical writers. Our life experiences may give rise to new images, new ways of expressing most fully our relationship with God. A deepening relationship encourages us to return to the Scriptures and seek there the images that have shaped the people of God before us. This diversity of images reminds us that human language is inadequate to express fully the whole of the reality of God. God is greater than any images we might speak or hold in mind. God is God, beyond the limits of our language. Yet God has given the gift of language as a way for people to reflect the truth about themselves and their relationship to God. Our mental images of God may change, but the reality of God does not change.

Whenever I think of our many and varied images for God, I am reminded of a four–year–old girl named Anna who lived near me many years ago. One afternoon as we were reading a book together, Anna pointed to the pink–tinged sky of a sunset, framed by the mountains below. "Look!" she cried out, laughing with joy. "God is wearing a pink dress!" She was too young to know it, of course, but Anna’s delight in the God who paints the sky was a confession that four–year–old girls, just as much as the grandmothers who come before them, are created in the very image of God.