Who Art Thou?
This reflection began as a struggle to pray. It became a search for the One I had been thanking all along. Through family, friends, strangers, and unexpected acts of kindness, perhaps grace has always been arriving with a human face.
There is a question I never expected to ask.
Not because I doubted God.
But because I no longer knew how to say thank You.
For months now, every time I have tried to pray to God, I have found myself hesitating.
Not Jesus. Never Jesus.
Conversation with Jesus comes naturally.
Relationship comes naturally.
Presence comes naturally.
But the moment I reach for the word God, something inside me grows quiet.
Words carry memory.
Sometimes they carry so much memory that they stop carrying relationship.
“God” had become one of those words for me.
It carried sermons and systems.
Doctrines and debates.
Certainties and fears.
Ideas inherited long before I ever had the chance to encounter the One they were trying to describe.
I realized I wasn’t struggling to pray. I was struggling to pray through a word that had become heavier than the relationship it was meant to reveal.
One morning, sitting alone in my car, I found myself asking a question I never imagined I would ask.
“Should I call You something else?”
Not because I wanted another god.
Because I wanted to stop missing the One I was trying to reach.
Then, without warning, another voice interrupted mine.
She spent much of her life quietly praying out loud.
As a child, I thought she was simply talking to herself.
Now I’m no longer so sure.
Her prayer was almost always the same.
இயேசு சுவாமி, எங்கப்பா. உமக்கே ஸ்தோத்திரம்.
i-YAY-su su-VAA-mi eng-app-PAA u-mak-KAY sto-thi-ram
Lord Jesus, our Appa. To You be praise.
I had heard those words hundreds of times.
Perhaps thousands.
But this time I heard something different.
She didn’t begin with an idea.
She began with a relationship.
Appa.
As I sat there, another realization quietly unfolded.
Jesus never spoke about God as an idea.
He simply spoke to Abba.
Not as a concept.
Not as a doctrine.
As Father.
As relationship.
And suddenly I wondered if my struggle had less to do with God than with the weight I had placed upon a word.
The God I was given is getting in the way of the God I keep meeting.
That sentence frightened me.
It sounded like rebellion.
Instead, I think it was grief.
Perhaps I don’t need another name for God.
Perhaps I need to remember the name Jesus Himself prayed.
Abba.
And somehow, across languages and generations, my grandmother had already taught me.
Appa.
Then another question found me.
Why had I been searching so desperately for the right name?
The answer surprised me.
Because I have been trying to find the right words to say thank You.
These past months of my life have been filled with grace.
Not abstract grace.
Human grace.
My mother’s steadfast presence.
My father’s quiet love.
My brother beside me in the story only we share.
My children, who have known more than one version of me and keep giving me the grace to become familiar again.
And all the little children in my life, whose trust, laughter, questions, and wonder keep reminding me that life is still arriving.
My ex-wife and the grace her family has continued to extend beyond the shape our marriage took.
My cousins, whose love has kept distance from becoming disconnection.
My church, which has continued to make room for both my formation and my need.
Friends who stayed.
Pastors who prayed.
Colleagues who remembered what I could offer when I struggled to remember it myself.
Professional communities that opened doors.
Recruiters who made introductions even when nothing came of them.
People who encouraged me without needing to know how the story would end.
And strangers whose kindness quietly met me on ordinary days.
A customer who said, “Drive safe.”
A vendor who offered water or something cold to drink on a hot, sunny day.
A brief conversation in a parking lot.
A smile at a doorway.
An unexpected generosity arriving on a day when I needed it.
Again and again, when I reached the end of myself, grace seemed to arrive wearing someone else’s face.
None of those people are You.
Yet through every one of them, I have encountered something that points beyond them.
Not obligation.
Not transaction.
Only gift.
Perhaps that is what grace has always been.
Not an abstract substance descending from heaven.
But Your life continually reaching us through one another.
Then another thought came alive.
Jesus always spoke of a relational Father.
Yet He also had a mother.
Without Mary’s “yes,” there is no Incarnation.
No heartbeat.
No first breath.
No human hands.
Somewhere along the way, we became very good at arguing whether God is masculine.
Yet the mystery at the center of Christianity is not masculine power.
It is divine relationship.
The Son receives from the Father. The Son receives His humanity from Mary. And every one of us receives life through others.
Perhaps grace has always entered the world through communion.
Perhaps that is why I can no longer separate my gratitude for God from my gratitude for people.
Not because people are You.
But because Your love keeps arriving through them.
So now my question has changed.
I am no longer asking because I have lost faith.
I am asking because I have received so much grace that I need to know where to direct my thanksgiving.
Who art Thou?
Not,
What art Thou?
Not,
How should I define Thee?
But,
Who is the One whose love I keep meeting in the faces of the people around me?
Perhaps knowing Your name is different from knowing You.
Perhaps every name eventually reaches its limit.
Except the one Your Son taught us.
Abba.
And perhaps my grandmother had been teaching me that prayer long before I knew I would need it.
Perhaps every act of grace I have received has been teaching me the same prayer ever since.
Perhaps I never stopped finding You.
Perhaps I simply kept thanking everyone else.
So today, I simply return to the words she carried.
இயேசு சுவாமி, எங்கப்பா. உமக்கே ஸ்தோத்திரம்.
Lord Jesus, our Appa. To You be praise.
Amen.