The Unknown God

“What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.” Acts 17:23

There were many shrines in Athens, some dedicated to Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love, the handsome Apollo, god of healing and arts, Ares, god of war and violence, Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt and animals, and many many others. Paul said he looked carefully at the shrines, no doubt they were artistically executed, but he noticed one in particular. It was inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God’. “What you worship in ignorance, this is what I am proclaiming to you,” he told the Athenians in the Areopagus, or ‘Ares’ Hill’ a place where people congregated. Some people like Dionysius and Damaris responded and believed. Others scoffed when Paul started talking about the resurrection of the dead. 

Many of us pick and choose what we like from the Bible. When I was in U.P. High School, the Gideon Bible Society gave each of us in our class a cute red Bible. We had to promise to read it. I very eagerly started to read, and continued to read, until I reached this verse, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” That is from the Gospel of John 12:25. 

After reading that verse which I heartily disagreed with because I loved my life, I stopped reading the Bible for several years. Many people like me, and like the people of Athens, want to make our own god. We want a god conformed to our own image of what God should be. We did not want the truth, we wanted to make our own truth. Happily when I was older I decided after several Life in the Spirit Seminars that I wanted to know God, really know Him, not my own version of God or my preference of what God should be. The “unknown God” honored my desire and my zeal to know Him. He spoke and made Himself available and I loved Him as my first love. 

How inconceivable that the God of the Universe, the earth and sea and sky, would stoop down to our level and meet us where we are! He WANTS us to know Him! If we just open up a space for Him in our hearts and lives, He will come in and sit with us and keep His promises!