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Thinking Anew – Love is the most powerful gift

“God is present in every loving word or thought or action.” Photograph: Getty Images

Gordon Linney
Sat May 16 2020 - 00:01

The young boy had something on his mind as he approached his father who was busy in the garden. “You know that song we sing in school, ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’. Is it true,” he asked, “that God has the whole world in his hands?” The father said it was true. “Really true?” the boy asked again, only to receive the same answer. That is terrible, the child said, God is crushing children in Australia.

A warning of the danger of talking down to children or adults for that matter when explaining our understanding of God.

That was not the case when Paul visited Athens, the intellectual centre of the ancient world. Tomorrow’s reading from Acts 17 tells us that when he toured the city, he discovered it was swamped with religious idols, among them at least one with the inscription “To an unknown god.” Later, given the opportunity to address a formal meeting of the Areopagus, he said: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” He goes on to speak at length about God’s universal presence and the significance of Jesus Christ.

There are limits to what anyone can know about God, as the scriptures make clear. “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? (Book of Job).

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But for some their understanding of God is confined to what they were taught as children and that, as indicated above, has serious limitations. Furthermore, the churches have assumed too much and not done enough to nurture people’s faith and spirituality.

There is an intriguing encounter in the Book of Exodus where Moses is anxious to know that God is with him and his people. He seeks reassurance and is told: ”...you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.”

One commentator suggests that this means that we only recognise God’s presence retrospectively, as seems to have been the experience of Jacob of Old Testament fame: “Surely the Lord was in this place and I knew it not.”

Too often we look for a faraway God – a somewhere out there God who seems to go missing when we need him.

While the Bible makes many references to the God of the universe it also points to the God of intimacy. God is love, we are told, so wherever love is experienced or seen in action God is as close as that – in the embrace of lovers, the cuddle of a child or grandchild, the smile of a friend.

God is present in every loving word or thought or action – in the tears that wave goodbye at an airport or welcome us home, the arms that comfort us in grief, the minds and hearts that care for others.

And that is true for religious and non-religious alike, the only distinction being recognition.

Christians believe that God has revealed himself in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and demonstrated that love is the most powerful gift available to humanity.

But like Moses we seek reassurance and that is promised in tomorrow’s reading from John 14: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

In that promise we find hope, a hope explained by Fr Henri Nouwen: “Being neither an optimist or a pessimist, Jesus speaks about hope that is not based on chances that things will get better or worse. His hope is built on the promise that, whatever happens, God will stay with us at all times, in all places”.

Even perhaps in a garden with a child and his father seeking truth.

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