The Image of Divine Grandeur

Last Sunday, as we were leaving Squaxin Park, we caught a glimpse of the most intense sunset I think I’ve ever seen. The sky was fuchsia, it reflected on the water, and everything had a pink tint to it. We rushed to an overlook to get a better view, but the trees blocked our view and we only saw a glimpse of it through the branches.

It made me think of the story of when Moses asks God; “Show me your glory.”

To which God replies, “no one can see me and live.”

Squaxin Park, November 2025 | Howard Ullery

Moses is asking God for assurance of God’s presence as he leads the people into the wilderness. Moses says/subtly threatens;

“If your Presence does not come with us, do not send us from this place. How can it ever be known that we have found favor in your eyes…if you do not accompany us?”

Don’t make me do this alone!

So it absolutely makes sense that Moses would follow that up with, “Please, show me your glory!”

Prove it! I need proof of your presence.

He has some separation anxiety.

God says;

“I will make all of my goodness pass before your eyes, and I will pronounce my Name, I AM, in your presence,… But you cannot see my face, …No human can see my face and live.” … Look—here is a place beside me, where you can stand on a rock. When my glory passes you, I will place you in a cleft in the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. When I remove my hand you will see my back; but my face, you must not see.”

We can never see God, we only see God in reflections and glimpses. The narrative continues with God instructing Moses to transcribe God’s commandments. As a parent, when you have to leave a kiddo who has separation anxiety, one tactic you can try is to leave them a special note and then wave to them though the window after you’ve left. God is saying, look, I’m not leaving you, grown-ups come back, here you can watch me leave and I’ll give you these notes to read when you miss me.

Much later, in a letter to the early church in Corinth, it says;

“For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then, [when Jesus returns] we will see face to face. Now we know only in part; then we will know fully, even as we have been fully known.”

Only in the fulfillment of the Kin-dom of God can we see the Divine face-to-face, until then we can only see glimpses. And so, we see glimpse of God. Through the tree branches, in a reflection, a flash in passing.

Theologian Sallie McFague invites us in her book, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, to imagine “the Word made flesh” beyond the body of Jesus and instead within the body of the universe, all bodies, all things, all of creation.

“We would, then, have an entire planet that reflects the glory, the very being-although not the face-of God. We would have a concrete panorama for meditation on divine glory and transcendence: wherever we looked, whether at the sky with its billions of galaxies (only a few visible to us) or the earth (every square inch of which is alive with millions of creatures) or into the eyes of another human being, we would have an image of divine grandeur.”

On Sunday we will use art and creativity as a meditation for imagining the Image of Divine Grandeur.

Sunday, November 16

4 pm

at the church

110 Eleventh Ave SE