We can paint pictures – with paintbrushes and colours.
A stroke here, a line there, a brushing here, an addition there and… we get an image, a representation of something, of someone.

But we can also paint… with words: the description of a scene, the evocation of an event, the allusion to a reality and… we also get an image.
An image that suggests, that recalls, that recaptures what is in the mind.

We do it for all kinds of things, and situations, and people.
We do it also for… GOD!

Many artists have attempted to give pictures of the Almighty in his glory surrounded by angels and saints.
They have created, literally, images of God as their imagination suggested.
We may feel inspired, or not, by their work, but their aim was to present us with something of God’s personality, if we can speak in those terms.

Spiritual writers have attempted the same: give us a ‘portrait’ of God as they saw him.
They have been trying to provide us with a picture of God that could inspire us.
The glimpse of God which their writings were giving was meant to awake within us sentiments of awe, of trust, of hope.

Perhaps one of the most tenderly descriptive images of God is that which Isaiah give us in the first reading of this 8th Sunday, Year A (Is.49:14-15).

“Does a woman forget her baby at the breast,
or fail to cherish the son of her womb?
Yet, even if these forget,
I will never forget you.”

God caring, God remembering the needs of a beloved child, God unable to forget his precious one.

If only we, too, could… never forget!

Soource: Images: Suzanna Ktherine, finaeartamerica.com; Pinterest; A Catholic Citizen in America