What does God look like? This sounds like a question that you would hear from a young child, but it’s from me. I’ve been curiously thinking lately about how to visualize God, so I will blog the processing of my thoughts, for my further reflections. I’m sure that upon meditating on His appearance, I’ll have more to add to this, because I anticipate He will reveal more of Himself to me in the days ahead.

Every now and then, when I pray, or still myself with God and just sit in His presence, I try to visualize Him. When I try this, to see Him in His own image, I’m confronted with nothing other than Light, brighter than the spark from a magnesium flint. His Light I see is white-hot and brilliant radiance, which cannot be contained, as it illuminates and blinds everything. This is all I see, just His brightness and glory, I can’t see His own unique face, or even form a face for Him, based on my impressions and knowledge of Him from His Word. I’m left piecing Him together and asking myself, “What does He look like?” as well as the follow up question of “Why can’t I picture Him?”

The Bible says God looks like us, because He made us to look like Him. Genesis 1: 26-27 says; “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” So, I suppose that in looking around me to others, and in my reflection, I can see what His image contains, but I still know it’s not an accurate grasp of Him.

I can easily visualize Him in the image of Christ. I can see myself holding Christ’s hand, and walking through expansive rivers to reach meadows filled with wildflowers, that release the aroma of freshness and purity. I see God through the descriptions of Christ sprinkled through the pages of the Bible:

“He [Christ] had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Isaiah 53:2

And, “‘If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?'” John 14:7-9.

“There he [Christ] was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.” Matt. 17:2

“He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Col. 1:15.

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” Col. 2:9.

I can further see Him in suggestive metaphors, God as a Father (John 20:17), then a Shepherd (John 10:14), as well as all the other glimpses of who He is through the Word; that He is our Creator (Isa 40:28), He is our I Am (Ex 3:14), He is our Mercy (Eph 2:4-5), He is our Potter (Isa 64:8), He is our El Roi (Gen 16:13), He is our Refuge (Psa 46:1), He is our Counselor (Isa 9:6), He is our Gate (John 10:9), He is our Healer (Ex 15:26), and He is our Gardner (John 15:1). On and on I could go, every page describes all that He is. He is everything (Eph. 4:6).

The Apostle John describes the vision of Him in Revelation 1:12-16, saying “And when I turned I saw someone “like a son of man,” dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice like the sound of rushing water. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance”(and again in Revelation 19:11-16 for another description). Further in Revelation 4:3, John describes what he sees as he peers into the open door of heaven, “And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.”

So….. God is just shining and radiant incandescence. He is strikingly intense majesty, glowing white, all originating from within Himself. I can see Him as such, and, I can see Him through His character that He faithfully spells out for me in His Word. He is patient, He holds justice, He is merciful, He is slow to anger, He is faithful, He is abounding in love, He is forgiving, and the best, He is constant. His breadth is fathomless to me, and so is His beauty. I don’t know why I want to put Him in a box by defining His appearance into a convenient mental picture. Is it in hopes of relating to Him when I feel His presence? Or is it Him, revealing to me, that I can’t put Him into a picture visually, I just have to trust Him and let the faith in my heart keep His picture? I know He can’t fit into the box my small imagination would paint Him into, I shouldn’t even want to try to paint His portrait in my head, but I still find that I try to conceptualize Him and His expanse. I have a picture of my kids in my wallet, as well as plastered to the fridge and walls around my house, I guess I want God everywhere too. But what I skip over is that He already is, in the faces of my smiling children, in the orchid growing in my kitchen window, in the grain of my wood floor, in the eyes of my husband, and in the reflection I see when I glance in the mirror. Yet, I know all of those are still just minimal next to Him.

Do you try to envision God? Or am I the only one?