Another of my favorites is 115. I'll address it in two parts: 1) 115:3 reads: Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. (NIV) The Message is closer to my own paraphrase. First, the Message: Our God is in heaven doing whatever he wants to do. (The Message) Second, my paraphrase: Our God is in heaven, and he does whatever he wants. (Pastor's Paraphrase) In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis writes of Aslan (his allegorical Christ-figure), He is not a tame lion. Too often, we try to fit God in the box of our own expectations. Everyone has his/her own theology, or understanding of God--the problem is that we think our theology is God, rather than understanding that our theology is too small... to limited. But let's go on.
2) 115:4-8 continues: But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats. And then comes the hammer between the eyes: Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. When speaking of God, we categorize God's characteristics into two broad groups, those describing his transcendence, and those describing his immanence. Vastly oversimplified, God's transcendence refers to characteristcs of power and majesty, while God's immanence refers to characteristics of love and intimacy. Immanence, however, should not be confused with smallness.
The words of the Psalmist teach us an important lesson. The God (or god) we serve determines the person we become. We can either make a god in our own image, or we can be made in the image of God.
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