How to Describe Him?

Once, when a woman was feeding her baby, the infant choked
and died. The woman informed her blind husband about the
death of their dear baby. The husband was very upset. He
wanted to know how the baby died.

The wife explained that as the milk got stuck in the throat of
the baby it died. The blind man who had not seen milk could
not understand how it could happen. He asked:

“What is milk?” The wife replied, “Milk is white.”
The blind man asked again, “What is white?” She answered,
“White is like a stork.”
The blind man was still confused: “How does a stork look?”
The wife was at a loss. Already upset, she told him that the
stork’s beak was like her fingers. The blind man felt his wife’s
fingers and exclaimed in anger and pain:

“You foolish woman, why did you feed the baby with such
a long and sharp milk ? No wonder, the baby died.”

Milk is neither long nor sharp. The woman failed to describe
it properly to her blind husband. Instead of comparing milk
to a stork, she could have given him a little milk to taste.

Like the blind man’s wife, scholars try to describe the glory
of God through illustrations. We can know God only when
we open our inner eyes and see Him. We cannot understand
His true nature by reading scriptures or through examples.

Books may describe the breadth, width, and greatness of the
Himalayas, but they cannot capture the experience of the
cold weather there. We have to go to the Himalayas to
experience that chill. Similarly, if we want to understand God
we have to enter the cave of our hearts and seek Him there.
We have to experience His presence. If not, we will be like
the proverbial frog in the well, which tries to measure the
depth of the ocean.