What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
"What does God do all day?" Why, everything that is being done in the
universe, except that which other wills are doing. And the child will is
only combining his Father's energies and thinking his Father's thoughts.
The child never works apart from his Father's enfolding powers. If we
could comprehend all the dynamics of the universe, we should know what
God is doing on _that plane_ of His activities. Or, if we could know all
His loving thoughts and higher purposes concerning His children, who are
striving and building in the midst of these simple, enfolding energies,
we should know what God is doing in the _moral realm_. The wall of
partition is broken down, the veil is rent in twain; we live in the Holy
Presence, since there is no other place to live. With Browning, we feel
that the atmosphere "Is the clear, dear breath of God who loveth us."
The pavement on which we walk is the power of the Great Will bearing us
up. Likewise, the buildings along the street are more of His beneficent
energies, providing shelter and rest for His loved ones. Our bodies are
also His energies, highly sensitized, through which we become
beautifully aware of our surroundings. All the vitality in the quivering
beams of ships, and all the propelling force in their engines, is but
the power of a Will, and that Will is the Father of our spirits. Leaving
out of mind for the present the thought of the vast universe, measure,
if you can, the ocean in its breadth and depth, which in its ceaseless
rising and falling raises and lowers ship-cities as if they were
snowflakes; and then remember that, if rightly applied, there is power
enough in each cup full of water to destroy a ship, and that all the
energy of the boundless worlds is but the will of Him in whom we "live
and move and have our being." Having done this, if you are not something
less than a man, you will fall down and adore in wonder, love and
praise. To be brought face to face with God in the beauty and awfulness
of nature is the only cure for the irreverence of this generation.
But some one says, "This makes God too great. Have you looked, and
staggered before the limitless heavens?" Yes, but is it not claimed that
God is Infinite?--and we have not yet found the equal of infinity. With
all our insistence upon the infinitude of God, perhaps it offends some
to think of Him as being equal to His universe,--or even to the little
part of it that we can imagine. However, God must be greater than all
His works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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