How can we even KNOW God?

Years ago, I had the honor and privilege to prepare some material to teach preschoolers about prayer.
 
Teaching preschoolers has been by far the biggest factor in my spiritual growth. I have to understand the material well enough to distill it to a simple and concise truth.  I am grateful every time I think of how God has called me to teach children so that I can be taught by Him.

As I considered how to best explain prayer, the idea of a phone conversation seemed very appropriate because I wanted to show them we talk to God even when we can't see Him.

One simple and profound thought jumped out at me.  HE CALLS US!  If God did not want us to talk to Him, we'd have no way of accessing Him.

Yet God DOES want a relationship, so He initiates, He calls!

He walked with Adam in the garden.
He walked with Enoch.
He spoke to Noah.
He called Abram out of Ur.
He called Moses from a burning bush.
He spoke to Saul of Tarsus after blinding him with light.
From the beginning of the story, we see God initiating contact with people.

Have you ever tried to get to know someone that won't tell you anything about themselves?  You can't.

Perhaps it's someone famous and you've read their biography and everything ever written about them.  You may know details about them, but you can't KNOW them.

Now imagine your best friend, and how you've spent time together and you KNOW things about them that they would never tell another soul.  You KNOW how they think and how they respond to things.  That is a different type of knowing.  They have trusted you and opened up to let you know them like that.

God, in His amazing love and graciousness has allowed us, His creatures, to KNOW Him.

Of course, there is no way to know everything about God.  It would make Him a very small god if my limited brain could contain all there is to know about Him.  There are things that are still a mystery, because He is more complex and more wonderful than we have the capacity to understand.

Because of our limitations, some even mock our perception of God.

The caption I saw attached to a similar cartoon said it was arrogant to claim to know God because our perception is limited to our own experience.  People in other faith traditions, they claim, can also know God, in a different, but equally valid way.

But what if the elephant talked?


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