I asked my dad what he liked best about Ramadan.

He told me he likes the evening prayers, where the faithful crowd into the corner mosques to hear the Holy Book read and to pray side-by-side.

"It really reminds you of who you are...which is nothing. You know? It's like, five minutes ago, maybe you were important--maybe you're the boss of people ore making big deals with lots of money--but then Allah has us come into the mosque and touch our heads to the ground and remember that he is everything and we are nothing. Five times a day, we put our faces ot the floor and remember who we are. We live twenty, fifty, amybe a hundred years, and then we disappear again. We're nobody. It doesn't add to God's wealth when we pray--it adds to ours because it reminds us who God is."

I got the chills as he spoke, and my eyes filled with familiar tears--the tears I taste when I receive a hand-written message from the Lord.

My dad spoke the truth--the very words I had heard from God that morning. God had reminded me, just hours before, of how very small I am and how immeasureable he is--the Almighty, the Lord of Lords. Separeate and unspeakably beautiful, awesome beyond our ability to express...This is my precious Savior.

A high view of God is the beginning of everything--fear of the Lord, the trembling humiliation of acknowledging our absolutely finite existence. This is an essential piece of reality--near the very core, I might venture to say.

To believe in a small God is, in my opinion, an incredible failure of logic.

To deny him is one thing--to belittle him is something entirely different.

Holy, holy, holy. Period.

(And, crowning this glory is the unspeakable miracle--one my father didn't share with me--that this God is a Redeemer, a Lover, a Counselor. Tender, tender, tender.)