This post is part of my Steps to Christ series.

The eyes of all look expectantly to You,
And You give them their food in due season.
You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.
- Psalm 145:15-16 NKJV

God created everything perfect and beautiful. It is the transgression of God’s law of love that brought and continues to bring death and suffering. Nevertheless, trials and difficulties can be used by God to uplift us form sin, from selfishness and degradation.

Nature bears a message of hope. There are beautiful flowers where there are thorns. Every opening bud declares that God is love and that He desires to make His children happy.

And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.”
Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
- Exodus 33:18-19 NKJV

God tells Moses, in essence, that His goodness is equivalent to His glory! That is, God’s glory is revealed in His goodness.

Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. Then he said, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
- Exodus 34:5-9 NKJV

Not only God’s glory but His name, who He is at His core, is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,” He even keeps mercy for thousands of generations. This is who God is. This is much more important than what He looks like or how you pronounce His name. We know this because this is a common theme in the Bible.

So he prayed to the Lord, and said, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.
- Jonah 4:2 NKJV
Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
When I fall, I will arise;
When I sit in darkness,
The Lord will be a light to me.
- Micah 7:8 NKJV

Jesus came to the world to give us a clearer picture of who God is and what the Father is like.

We will look into that on our next post!

If you wish to go further check out the first chapter of the book Steps to Christ.