When I first began some serious courting we quickly developed a routine for Sunday family time.  Church going was not optional.  My girl-friend and I went twice every Sunday – I guess, because we didn’t have three Sunday church services.  I once – in my teenage-years – asked my mother why we had to go to church twice every Sunday.  She said, “Oh, we don’t have to!  But isn’t it a wonderful privilege that we’re allowed to?  I never asked again and adopted my Mum’s philosophy on church-going as my own.

But back to our family arrangement!  Between worship services we had dinner one Sunday with her family and the next Sunday with my family.  That was a good way of getting to know each other’s families and for the family to get to know our betrothed.

I must admit though that for me this was something of a culture shock.  I came from a household where I had three siblings and where things were generally fairly sedate.  My dearly beloved had nine siblings.  Can you imagine ten young people all vying for Mum and Dad’s attention around the Sunday dinner table?  And then I should add that the older ones were all bringing prospective partners home for Sunday dinner as well.  It was not unusual to have sixteen people crammed into their dining room.

Those thoughts came back to me recently when someone told me they came from a large family.  Not as large though as my in-laws’ family.  When I mentioned that my parents-in-law had ten children my friend asked in amazement, “How on earth did they manage that?”  Well they did.  But for me it raised quite a different question.  My heavenly Father has more than ten children – much, much more.  And when I think of all the children in my in-law family competing for Mum and Dad’s attention over Sunday dinner, then I confess I have trouble getting my head around all the children of my heavenly Father vying for His attention.  Think about it!  At any one moment there must be hundreds of thousands of Christians speaking to the Lord in prayer.  Too bad for me if He happens to miss my prayers merely because the phone line to heaven got a little too congested.

It’s at this point that the word ‘transcendent’ becomes helpful.  The word comes from two Latin words: The word ‘trans’, meaning beyond or above; and the word ‘scandare’, meaning ‘to climb’.  We achieve transcendence when we’ve gone beyond ordinary limitations... past and above all others.  The point is that God is transcendent.  He is far above and beyond all our human limitations.

For Christians that’s a great encouragement.  I need to remember God’s transcendence whenever I’m tempted to think God might be too busy to attend to my prayers because there are a zillion other people praying to Him as well.  No!  My parents in law undoubtedly had moments, when handling all the needs and demands of their ten children got a little too much for them.  But that’s not an issue for the Lord God who is far above and beyond our human boundaries.  It’s for this reason that the song-writer can remind us in Psalm 3 that ‘The Lord will hear when I call to Him.”  That’s quite a common theme in the Psalms.  Psalm 17:6 – “I call upon you and you will answer me, O God.”  A transcendent Father in heaven can do what no earthly father can do: listen to the prayers of a thousand children all at once.

There are two problems though with transcendence.

The first is that too many people don’t accept there is any transcendent reality.  If you can’t put it under a microscope or put into a test tube it doesn’t exist.  Only the physical and material is real.  Sad!  That means they have no one to pray to in their time of need.

The other problem is that transcendence seems to speak of remoteness and distance.  If our Father-God is so far above and beyond all ordinary limitations does that not tend to remove God from any intimacy with His human creatures?  No!  The amazing thing is that this transcendent God actually uses the imagery of the Sunday family dinner table, to talk about the way He wishes to relate to us.  In Revelation 3:20 Jesus tells us that he’s standing at the door and knocking.  “If anyone opens the door I will come in and eat with Him and he with me.”

John Westendorp