Glimpses of Our God
Who can look at those photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and not marvel at the beauty of the cosmos? Astonished at the famous photo of the “Sombrero Galaxy,” one writer said: “How can we begin to fathom the knowledge, the power, the reasoning, the truths, and the purposes that went into the Sombrero Galaxy (which is just one among billions of others)? Here we are, so small and so isolated, a speck of the creation with so much in our view but so infinitely beyond our grasp.”
More astonishing than the universe itself, however, has to be its Maker, because only something greater than the universe could have made it.
Of course, as Seventh-day Adventists, the God whom we worship and serve is the One who, indeed, has made the universe—everything from the Sombrero Galaxy to the quarks that compose all matter in it and everywhere else, as well.
It is in this context, that of the Lord whom we worship and serve, that our quarter’s lesson is going to do some “theology,” a technical term for “the study of God.”
This quarter we’re going to look at God, at various aspects of Him as they have been revealed to us and at what these things mean for us on a practical level. We’re going to start with some of the “basics,” such as the Trinity—the amazing teaching that God is One God and yet composed of three Persons. From there, we’re going to focus on God as Creator, the doctrine that forms the foundation of all that we believe.
And we also are going to look at some other aspects of God not commonly thought of, such as God as a God of beauty, of history, and even of romance.
God is big (after all, He created—along with everything else—the Sombrero Galaxy!). We are so small in contrast. How grateful we should be, then, for every bit of light He casts our way.
Jo Ann Davidson is a professor of Theology at Andrews University Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
For important corrections to First quarter 2012 guide, please visit:
http://www.absg.adventist.org/Correction.htm
* Please note that the remaining lessons for fourth quarter 2011 are still on the ABSG Web site. Click on the purple button below for the edition in which you are interested. Scroll down the page to locate them posted beneath the new quarter's lessons.
