Parakalein

These two ideas seem mutually exclusive.  Theologians have debated it.  Churches have split over it.  Families and people are distressed over it.  In a blog entry a creative fellow blogger (she is more creative than me so it he fellow blogger is about us the creative comment is about her).  It always amazes me how people can read things very different than I intend them but I am working on this.  A few weeks ago Di at The Kitchen Door - wrote about people believing that God is not omnipotent.  I was triggered to write the following blog as I believe God is omnipotent and also All loving.  So here are some thoughts on congruency of those apparent opposites.

The creator God holds the world in their hands.  The plurality of God is the context for the paradoxes of humanity. God gives freedom then has to retreat from over asserting or controlling events but remains present.  How is that?

When we hold people in our lives it is often so loosely that they do not feel or experience our care.  Sometimes it is so firmly that we feel smothered or controlled.

Two things I have learned about humanity.  Everyone loves to have some kind of control over something or someone.  No one likes being controlled or having no control.  This creates a paradox and polarization.

God holds loosely allowing humanity total freedom of choice.  He also holds firmly giving humanity a sense of presence that is not about power to control but about the power to be present even though apparently out of control.

God is not the power controlling God that some present him to be.  God is free of the need to control for they are open to and embracing of both love/surrender and power/control.

For God it is not the presence of power but the power of presence.

The psalmist declared in Psalm 62:11 “One thing hast thou said, Two things have I heard, that though o Lord are Loving that thou o Lord are power.   Love and power are one in the heart of God that sees the power to surrender and the sacrifice of loving as the essence of the divine.  It is the majestic matrix of the divine.  God holds the world and everyone in the world in the non-confining, non controlling arms of love and the power of loving presence.

The creator is the sustainer, the sustenance, the substance, and source of all that is.

The God of creation is the God who is strong enough to give “freedom of the will” and remain present regardless of how that freedom is used.  God is not in control of all things but as all things happen God is in control of creatively finding, forming, forging and framing good in and out of what happens.

God is good and loving not in that he controls things and only lets good and love happen in the world.  God is good and loving in that, whatever happens in the world out of his control, he is not rattled but draws meaning out of and pours meaning into all that happens.  This is why it is all good!

All is good.  God is all love and God is all powerful.

Everything (Genesis 1:31) works together for good” (Romans 8:28)

It is all very good.