Tag: God

Bonhoeffer – Act and Being

The entire situation raises the question whether the formalisticactualistic understanding of the freedom and contingency of God in revelation is to be made the foundation of theological thought. In revelation it is not so much a question of the freedom of God—eternally remaining within the divine self, aseity—on the other side of revelation, as it is of God’s coming out of God’s own self in revelation. It is a matter of God’s given Word, the covenant in which God is bound by God’s own action. It is a question of the freedom of God, which finds its strongest evidence precisely in that God freely chose to be bound to historical human beings and to be placed at the disposal of human beings. God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God’s freedom. God is present, that is, not in eternal nonobjectivity but—to put it quite provisionally for now—’haveable’, graspable in the Word within the church.

“THE PROBLEM: B. THE PROBLEM OF ACT AND BEING IN THE INTERPRETATION OF REVELATION AND THE CHURCH AS THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM.” In Act and Being, edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd, 95-149. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1931. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cdocument%7C4747484. 

 

God’s default is slow

German Forester Peter Wohlleben recently (2015) published a book “The Hidden Life of Trees”, and while it’s primarily about the intelligence that some scientists are finding within trees in connected communities in forests, I found a glimpse of how God handles time. Early on in the book, Wohlleben explains how a “mother tree” nurtures a “child tree” for decades. It’s not uncommon for a mother tree to restrict the growth of the child for 80 years. The life time of trees isn’t measured in decades, like a human life, it’s measured in hundreds of years.

I’m not quite sure where I heard this quote recently, but it’s been knocking around in my head:

God’s default is slow

How true I found this quote to be while reading about the processes involved in the life of a tree in a forest lasting hundreds of years. I found this to be a perfect metaphor on how God thinks about time.

It is easy to complain that yesterday’s prayer hasn’t been answered, but when we turn to the bible, we see story after story of large periods of time when God was seemingly inactive, he may have even provided someone with a promise, but it takes time for that promise to come to fruition.

As a 28 year old, I find comfort in hearing others stories when they say that they didn’t start doing ‘there thing’ until they were in their early thirties. While I’m mindful that if there is any chance of seeing a generation in front of any children that I might be blessed to have in the future, God might need to get a wriggle on in the relationship department. I still have time on my side.

That said, I also don’t want to waste time. It’s a precious resource.

Life comes in movements, or seasons. While sometimes I want to be in the next season, try as hard as we might, in order to get through winter into summer, we must go through winter and spring. And in the waiting, character is developed. Just as a mother tree nurtures their child for decades, so that the child can build strength and resilience, so that when the time is right, it can grow into the tree it was destined to be.

A song that talks about waiting on the apparent slowness of God: Take Courage, the chorus goes like this:

[Chorus]
So take courage my heart
Stay steadfast my soul
He’s in the waiting
He’s in the waiting
And hold onto your hope
As your triumph unfolds
He’s never failing
He’s never failing

Waiting can suck. Apparently it’s worth it.

Julian of Norwich – Poo

‘A man walks upright, and the food in his body is shut in as if in a well-made purse. When the time of his necessity comes, the purse is opened and then shut again, in most seemly fashion. And it is God who does this, as it is shown when he says that he comes down to us in our humblest needs. For he does not despise what he has made’

(Julian of Norwich)

From Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 6