“God.” It’s a tiny word with immense weight.

For some, it’s a word that brings comfort — a source of love, guidance, or presence.
For others, well, it’s complicated… Maybe tied to childhood religion. Maybe heavy with hurt. Maybe just… distant or hard to define

It’s okay — even necessary— to ask, What do we mean when we say “God”?

Because the Bible doesn’t offer one tidy definition of God. Instead, it gives us poetry and parables, prophets and questions, silence and songs.

God is a creator, a parent, a fire, a whisper.
God walks in gardens, speaks from mountains, weeps over cities.

Sometimes God is described with strength and justice — sometimes with tenderness and tears.
Sometimes God seems as close as breath. Other times, frustratingly hidden.

Rather than demand belief in one narrow image, the Christian tradition invites us into a relationship — with a God who can’t be boxed in or easily explained.

It’s the kind of question you live with, not just answer. And maybe that’s the point.

As the 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart once said:

“Let us pray to God to be free of God”

…meaning the false ideas we’ve made in place of the real, living mystery.

So we don’t try to solve the mystery. Instead, we’ll sit with it. Explore it. We’ll consider how people across the Bible, across cultures, and across history — have experienced the divine.

And we’ll ask what it might look like for us to experience God too — not just as an idea, but as a presence that transforms how we live, love, and see the world.