Tuesday 19 March 2013

God's power

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God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on the ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss, into wisdom, understanding, and even joy.

Rachael Givens

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peculiarpeople/2012/05/mormonism-and-the-dilemma-of-tragedy/

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To alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss, into wisdom, understanding, and even joy; seems to me a profoundly helpful analogy for understanding the nature of the help God provides when we are faced with pain, here in this mortal life on earth.

God does not will all instances of suffering; He cannot prevent all instances of suffering; and yet the risk of suffering is necessary - being intrinsic to and inescapable from God's plan.

But God can and will ultimately, in Time, weave all evil and suffering into his purposes.

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2 comments:

Bruce B. said...

I like the way the CCC discusses God and time:
600. “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of "predestination", he includes in it each person's free response to his grace”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122a4p2.htm

The Crow said...

Humans seek comfort.
That is why they so rarely glimpse God.
God is life. Life is not comfort.
Comfort may occur in life.
So may everything else.