God is a Holy Tiger

Our God is a holy God. He is different from us in this regard. We always have some taint in us but in Him there is none. All His words are true. He perfectly keeps every promise. He says what is both just and right. All His dealings with man are according to His perfect righteousness. In Him there is no shadow, no darkness, no sin. For those who ponder long on God’s holiness, the result can be both terrifying and depressing. Terrifying because we realize that this holy God is one that cannot be approached by such as ones as us. We have sinned and do sin and not only in ourselves or against others. Depressing because many of our sins are ones that we know are only directly against God. We have failed, again, in the very area where we failed before, made commitments and promises and fell again. We know that we are new creatures and that are to be new creatures, but somehow our growth in grace seems to be painfully slow, sometimes lurching forward and other times sliding backwards.

When we contemplate these things, in the face of a Holy God, our Holy God, our tendency is to be afraid. We wonder if such a perfect one as Him will really accept such a feeble one as us. God is holy. This is fearsome and terrible. But we should not flee. We should not run from Him. But we should, we must, run to Him.

When our children were small, I often played tiger with them. I turned off the lights, growled, hid, stocked, and at the right moment, attacked them. Usually, the smallest one at the time was very unsure about this game. They stayed close to base. Dad is now terrible. He is the Tiger. But then, by degrees, they would venture farther from base and when they least expected it, I would spring out from behind a door and chase. The older ones would run to base, knowing the nature of the game. But the youngest would only freeze in her place, perhaps cry, in a state of confusion whether to run for base or to the Tiger. But they usually made the right choice. They ran for Tiger, hoping that Tiger really was Dad. And he always was.

One of our sins is a failure to know who God is. He is a Tiger. He is dangerous. He is holy. Therefore, we must know this. We must run to Him. To run away, to be stuck in the middle in confusion, to not know the Heavenly Father, this is the shame. So, let us learn Him and run to this fearsome one, for safety.