We recently saw the latest version of The Lion King. Before the feature began, they showed a trailer for the remake of Cats.
The Lion King is a classic coming of age story. Only the characters are animals. With human characteristics, emotions, yearnings. And they speak really good English. Thank you to computational advancements and high resolution digital graphics.
Similarly with the presentation of TS Eliot’s classic poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
Humans have done that with God for millennia.
Even though God is spirit as defined many times in the Bible and other sources, we like to imagine God as an old white man. (That’s us, I have seen God in the image of whatever ethnicity imagines what God looks like.)
This becomes an audacious attempt to limit God. Even though this being created the entire universe, we attempt to limit “him” to just being one of us.
Then we attempt to limit grace to people like us.
The movement about Grace Turned Outward attempts to bring people to the understanding that it’s not all about our group. It’s about spreading this spirit of God and Grace among everyone no matter the ethnicity or geography or present beliefs or what they eat or how they dress.
Animals talking make for entertaining stories.
Limiting God to being an old white guy in the clouds threatens to reduce God’s power in our lives and inhibit the spread of grace.
Faith Venture 
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