The 3 Q's of God

The ABC’s of knowing God better: the letter “Q”
   
      
So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.” – Isaiah 28:16 NIV
      
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” – Matthew 21:42 NIV
      
      
“Q? What was I thinking?” I muttered to myself lastweek as I mulled over words beginning with the letter “Q” that describe God.
      
I browsed through the “Q” section in a Bible dictionary and my “Flip Dictionary,” which is actually a thesaurus, and came up with three possibilities: qualified, quantity, and quoin.
      
Qualified means “having the necessary skill, experience, or knowledge to do a particular job or activity: having the qualifications to do something” (Merriam-Webster online dictionary). You could say God, the Creator of all there is, is qualified. He sets the bar. More than that. He is the bar. He is the omni of omnis. He can do anything, for nothing is impossible for Him (Luke 1:37, Matthew 19:26).
      
Quantity, a noun, means “an amount or number of something; a large amount or number of something.”
      
How big is God? Bigger than you or I can imagine. He limitless, infinite.

I love the way A.W. Tozer describes this attribute of God: “God, being infinite, does not dwell in space; He swallows up all space. Scripture says, ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ (Jeremiah 23:24), and that sounds as if God were contained in heaven and earth. But actually God fills heaven and earth just as the ocean fills a bucket which has been submerged in it a mile down. The bucket is full of ocean, but the ocean surrounds the bucket in all directions.” (The Attributes of God)
      
Then I came to quoin.
      
What’s a quoin, and why would I choose such an odd word to describe God?
      
Actually it’s quite appropriate.
      
Wikipedia describes quoins as “masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. They exist in some cases to provide actual strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble.”
      
A quoin is like a cornerstone – “the stone representing the starting place in the construction of a monumental building” – and a keystone – “the wedge-shaped piece at the crown of an arch that locks the other pieces in place; something that is essential, indispensable, or basic.” (Dictionary.com)
      
“See,” God tells us through the prophet Isaiah, “I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (Isaiah 28:16).
      
I thought finding a word beginning with the letter “Q” was impossible.
      
Then God showed me nothing with the One who fills time and space and gives strength to inferior rubble like me is impossible.

      
Thank you, infinite God, for being my cornerstone, my rock of stability, in a world that gets more i\unstable by the day. Amen.

Special-Tea: Read Psalm 118