Ramadan 2025 Day Seventeen: You're a Great God

“For every spiritual community,
we have appointed acts of devotion for them to observe;
so do not let them argue with you [Prophet] about this matter
and invite them to your Lord -
you are on a path established by the Divine.”
-Sura Al Hajj

When did humanity turn God into a commodity? Something that could be bought and sold? Something that had a finite supply? Something that needs to regulated, but only one of us has the right set of rules?

I once had a mentor tell me that “God is too big of a word to let one person define.” As someone who used to hate the word because of the variety of ways it was used against me, I’d slowly started to open back up to it while in seminary. It was, as God would have it, my studies of the Bible and largely Christian systematic theologies that brought me back to my faith of origin, Islam. In diving deep into the limitations and possibilities of one faith, I realized I could do the same with my own. I could honor and care for any traumatic interpretations of my past, while also leaning into exciting interpretations for my future. If God truly is unlimited, there couldn’t be just one way to define what is Holy and Good.

But because of fear or a hunger for power, humanity needed to make God something scarce, something only a select few had genuine access too. We turned what could be an exhilaratingly vibrant tapestry of faith into rags. Some among us let the differences we encountered become sources of division and dehumanization - and those who had not quite abandoned the possibility of weaving our truths together had their trust violated, and their communities decimated. Certain ways of being and believing were deemed as having a more validity, and that meant their followers could conquer anyone or anything that varied from their views.

I believe it is more often than not those differences that strengthen our understanding and appreciation of the breadth of what some call “God.” How magnificent that there can be multiple ways of understanding the lessons of love, community, and care! How intriguing that there are different prostrations and prayers across our communities, and yet, we all understand that humility is the primary orientation many have when relating to “God.” How exciting that the Sacred can show up in so many ways, lifetimes, and forms to teach and sustain the diverse range of humanity and life?
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How great is it that God is so big, we all get to share what we’ve been revealed as part of God’s abundance?