Carolyn E. Jacobs

Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5 This week’s attribute may seem like a contradiction to last week’s friendly, sociable, genial qualities. Yahweh is both sociable and holy–set apart. Holiness is separateness. He is set apart from sin and set apart to moral perfection. How can He be both? By His mercy and grace. Ann Spangler says it so well: In his holiness, God exists above and apart from the world he has made. The kicker is this: How can a holy God who can have no communion with sin have anything to…

We’re starting out in Genesis again this week – what a surprise! I can’t pin down this attribute with just one word – they’re all inadequate. Friendly, sociable, genial, approachable–they all fall short in describing the King of Creation who genuinely enjoys hanging out with us. When we think of Genesis 3, we tend to either get a sinking feeling about the serpent enticing Eve to sin or the promise of Jesus found in Genesis 3:15. But I also see in Genesis 3 a Father who genuinely enjoys the company of his children. Now they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and…

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. – Psalm 19:1 Another thing we learn from creation – our God is a genius. His genius of design is everywhere we look, in every branch of arts and sciences. The cosmos proclaims, “He designed this–for us!” The Goldilocks Principle In astrobiology, the Goldilocks Principle applies to the range of distances that a planet can be from its star and maintain surface temperatures that are just right for water to be liquid. This range is known as the Goldilocks Zone. Temperatures that allow for liquid water are considered “just right” because life as we…

Taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! – Psalm 34:8 Our creative Creator constantly amazes me. Think of the variety He’s blessed us with and the abilities He’s given us to appreciate it. Sight From the grandeur of the night sky to mountain vistas to desert landscapes or lush gardens, God created a beautiful world. He could have created a gray, dull, monochromatic world. But He didn’t. He gave us a breathtaking color spectrum. He could have made the entire world as flat as Oklahoma, but He didn’t. There are five major biomes: aquatic, grassland, forest, desert, and tundra, broken down into specific categories–from  alpine biome to…

The heavens tell of the glory of God; And their expanse declares the work of His hands. – Psalm 19:1 The second attribute of God for the 2025 blog series is creativity. Elohim of Genesis 1 is a creative creator. Create – to cause to come into being. Creativity – “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination” – Dictionary.com Create, creator, creative, creation, creativity, and creature all have a common root, but sometimes I take for granted just how creative the Creator is. We’ll take a few posts to highlight His…