I am who I am – and the ultimate Being and infinite source of all being

When Moses asked God for a name, by which Moses could tell the Israelites who sent him to liberate them from slavery, the response from God was one of the most profound and mysterious declarations of who he is that can be found in the Bible. In Exodus 3: 14 it says.

“God said to Moses ‘I am who I am. So, go and tell the Israelites ‘I am has sent me to you.’

But what does this declaration mean? And what are the implications? There are many, many, meanings and implications, of course, and we cannot pretend that our very limited understanding will get to the bottom of them all (and see Proverbs 3: 5-6). What we can say though is that this nameless declaration of God is pointing us toward the infinite source of all being. That all creation and forms of life, all forms of being in other words, and which can be named and is finite (possessing a beginning and an end and is part of the world we live in), has been made by a nameless infinite Being – a mind-boggling infinite vast God who is beyond created being, and is the life-giving source all being, all the universe, and all that is in the universe.    

I have been meditating on and praying about the above on and off for a while now, but when I do, I sometimes seem to have glimpses of an infinite landscape that is way beyond my own limited horizons – and that landscape is over-flowing with an infinite love, and infinite power – or a limitless glory and wonder (and see 1 John 4:7-21). Moreover, nothing can compare with this landscape of a for-ever God who not only created everything, but also became one of us too – so my Christian beliefs tell me at Christmas especially that, extremely strangely, he became a part of what he created in a person called Jesus, and so knows what it is to Be infinite, and Be finite (and see John 1). This for-ever God, my for-ever God, also knows what it is like to be here in one place with me and with another, as he occupies and dwells within you too, and at the same time as he makes his home within me (and see Luke 17:20-21). Nothing is beyond our God then, we might say - Praise be to God, all glory is his!!