Morning Meditation: Inclusive Language for God

In a small Anabaptist congregation in Lancaster County, an elderly farmer once opened his prayer with words that silenced the room: "Mother-Father God, you who knit me together the way my wife's hands knit blankets for our grandbabies — hold us now." Some shifted uncomfortably. Others wept. He had named something true about the God who declares in Isaiah 49:15, "Can a mother forget the infant at her breast?" — and then in Ephesians 2:14, tears down every wall we build between ourselves and one another.

The Anabaptist tradition has always understood that the way we speak shapes the world we inhabit. When we call God only "King" and never "Comforter," only "Judge" and never "Midwife" — a title God claims in Psalm 22:9 — we lose sight of the full, breathtaking portrait Scripture paints. El Shaddai, the God of abundant nourishment. Jehovah Rapha, the One who heals. El Roi, the God who truly sees.

This morning, sit with this: Christ himself is our shalom — our peace, our wholeness. He dismantled the dividing wall not by choosing a side, but by gathering every scattered fragment into one body. When we expand our language for the Divine, we are not diminishing God. We are finally letting the frame grow wide enough to hold what was always there.

Pray today with one unfamiliar name for God. Let it feel strange on your tongue. Then notice — does the Holy One feel closer, or farther away? The answer may surprise you into joy.