Exodus 33:21-23
And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:  And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

There is more to God than we can see from this angle.  Even as God’s redeemed children, we are still contained within the bounds of this world and reside in our bodies of flesh.  And so the back parts are all that we can see from here, the parts of God that we need to know in our fallen state as sinful and fleshly people upon the Earth.  God reveals those parts of Himself to Moses, and to us, even though we cannot see His face just yet.

But the truly amazing and wonderful thing is that we can know God to a certain degree even here, even now, even as we are.  He will come close.  He has revealed His character.  He has spoken to our world.  He interacts with His people.  He resides with His beloved.  And He can be a part of our lives.  But in many ways it is up to us how big of a part He plays.

This interaction Moses has with God comes just after he came down from the mountain and found the people worshiping the golden calf, and that incident demonstrates a stark contrast taking place.  Moses has continually gotten closer and closer to God.  He’s sought Him more and more as they’ve gone forward.  He’s interacted with Him.  He’s spoken with Him.  But the people, for the most part, stood afar off.  They were content with a lesser god because they didn’t know God like Moses did, and in a lot of ways, it seemed like they didn’t want to know Him, either.

So what are we doing with this opportunity to know God here and now?  How much are we seeking Him?  Because though what we can know about Him now is limited, we’ll never exhaust all that we can know of Him here.  There is always something more to discover.  There is always a way to grow deeper in our relationship.  There is a journey to take following God, walking beside Him, having communion with our Lord.  Though we can’t see all or understand all or know all just yet, what we can know of God is enough to fill our hearts and to fill our lives.  So may we seek Him with our whole hearts, and then we can’t help but be amazed when He meets with us.