Mary Foxwell Loeks - Names of God: Meditations

2007 by Mary Foxwell Loeks

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are from THE LIVING BIBLE, 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NEB are from THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE. 1961, 1970 by The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible. 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked BV are taken from THE BERKELEY VERSION IN MODERN ENGLISH. 1958 by Zondervan Publishing House.

Scripture quotations marked TNIV are taken from TODAYS NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Page Design by Casey Hooper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Loeks, Mary Foxwell.
Names of God / Mary Foxwell Loeks.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8499-1979-4 (trade paper)
1. GodName. I. Title.
BT180.N2L645 2007
231dc22

Printed in the United States of America

07 08 09 10 11 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To John,

who suggested the idea

for this book

Contents

Join All the Glorious Names

Did Adam and Eve have cell phones?my five-year-old grandson, Liam, wondered. They werent invented yet, he was told. Well, how did they send their e-mails then? he asked his mother.

Liam reminds me how much my personal world, and the world around me, has changed since I typed the manuscript for GloriousNames of God, the predecessor of this book, on my manual typewriter. But as I have reread the words written over two decades ago, I have been struck by the realization that our God has not changed. Each of the names we have been given for God lights up a facet of who God is as clearly as when that name was first given in Scripture.

This is a book of invitations to worship. Each meditation is an attempt to attribute worth to our God by naming one of his names. They are designed to be used in private worship or by those who wish to lead a group in a brief time of focusing on God and who he is.

As I have studied these names, I have been impressed with how many pairs of them stand in stark contrast to each other! God is the Lord and the Servant. God is the Lamb and the Lion and the Lioness. God is the Shepherd and the Lamb. The Alpha and the Omega; the Almighty and the Abba.

The minute we have the audacity to think we understand, God brings to mind another name, equally true but which seems to shatter the mold into which we have just tried to cram our very great God. Looking at these contrasting pairs of names is like seeing only the legs of a giant parabola! We know they meet and are one, even if we dont quite see how.

I am honored by the decision of Thomas Nelson to republish this book. I pray these meditations will serve as aperitifs to whet your appetite for your own further reflection and study. I invite you to name the names of our God with me, and as you do so, be full of wonder that our great God has said, I have called you by name, you are mine (Isa. 43:1 RSV, emphasis added).

Mary Foxwell Loeks

SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 1:12; JOHN 1:114

In the beginning God... (Gen. 1:1)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. (John 1:12)

I am the Alpha... , the First... , the Beginning. (Rev. 22:13)

Time had a beginning. Creation had a beginning.We had a beginning. Civilizations have a beginning. Books have a beginning. All of the endeavors we would undertake have their beginning.

But God? God has no beginning. Before any other beginning began, God was. Before Abraham was born, I am! declared Jesus (John 8:58).Why, then,would the eternal God have named himself Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, the beginning? It must have been because God is the great Beginner of all other beginnings! Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3).

Christ, to thee, with God the Father,
And, O Holy Ghost, to thee,
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving,
And unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory,
Evermore and evermore.
Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348c. 410)

Alpha God, we lay before you that which we will attempt to begin thisday. We acknowledge that without you, all our attempts at beginnings arein vain. We cant see what will result from that which we now begin.Apprehension is mixed with our enthusiasm. We place it before you, AlphaGod, knowing that you see not just the beginning but the whole.

We worship you; we build our lives upon you, our Alpha God, who istruly without beginning.

SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 3:120; GALATIANS 3:19, 2329

The LORD God said to the serpent... I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:1415 RSV)

What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. (Gal. 3:19)

A seed is a promise of what is to come. Tiny and insignificant in appearance, it nonetheless contains within it the complete and particular genetic code for the life it is intended to produce.

The eternal God, who requires no other for origin or completion, desires creatures who will freely choose to love him. These creatures have to be able to choose to love, or not, for love of God with its accompanying obedience must be freely offered, or it is not love. It didnt take the earliest humans long to choose the or not. And humans have been compounding their choices in the or not column ever since.

But Eves risk-taking God persists. The love and compassion that we tend to see more readily in our reading of the New Testament begins here in Genesis 3. The humans created in Gods own image have just shattered any possibility of the sort of loving communion God wants with them. In the presence of Adam and Eve, God speaks to Satans instrument, the serpent, telling it how this story is going to end. From now on, God says, there is enmityirreconcilable differencesbetween Satans seed and the seed of Eve. From Eves offspring will come the Seed (Gal. 3:19), Jesus Christ. Satan will bruise the heel of Eves Seed. The damage will be costly and painful, but not like the fatal bruising of Satans head that will be accomplished by Eves Seed, Jesus.