I heard a preacher say “Remember, God is not holy. God is not holy, holy. God is holy, holy, holy.”

Today, a raucous man screamed at me. He was screaming “YOU NEED TO BE BAPTISED” in the story that he was telling. It makes me think on the power of single letters. Think of it this way: in the English language, we name our letters unique names. But, in, say, Hebrew, each letter has many meanings. The Hebrew letter “aleph” literally means ox. It is the word “ox”. But, beyond that, it also has a numeric value of 1.

א

So. The enormity of the realization that the preacher was not simply yelling a story at me, but rather talking to me in capital letters instantly brought me back to idea of capitalization for honor.

For who but God do we capitalize pronouns?
Who is important enough to take “I love you” and make it “i love You”?

No one, that’s who. God is so completely wholly worthy of every praise, that denying Him even one capital letter is a grave offense. The reason we don’t know His name in its entirety is because the ancients among His people were afraid to write the whole thing down. What if His name was thrown out, or worse yet, burned!

This got me thinking. Yes, I was thinking real hard about how small I am in front of God. I am a plain, old, English “a” while god is Aleph. God is an Ox, God is One. God is THE One. He is beautiful, and He is endlessly powerful.

He is my creator, and i love Him.

My thoughts of God, as usual, sent me into prayer. I prayed something like this:

God, you are so holy, God. You are so “other”. God, You are ontologically and ethically holy. God, I confess that I can never be what you want me to be, but I am going to try with unprecedented effort to be exactly what You want from me, what You want for me. i love You, and I want to love You with everything that I have. Amen.