Ah Lord GOD! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

You know no God but me,
and besides me there is no saviour.
I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.

He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

The beloved of the LORD rests in safety.

Happy are you, O Israel!
Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD,
the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph!

I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.
I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.

It is I who answer and look after you.
I am like an evergreen cypress;
your faithfulness comes from me.

The LORD, your God, is in your midst…
he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.

Love the Lord, all you his saints.
The Lord preserves the faithful,
but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord.

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone. Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

Jeremiah 32:17; Hosea 13:4; Isaiah 44:6; Isaiah 6:3; 1 Timothy 6:15-16; James 1:17; Deuteronomy 33:12; Deuteronomy 33:29; Hosea 11:4; Hosea 14:8; Zephaniah 3:17; 1 John 4:16; 1 Peter 1:8; Psalm 31:23,24; John 1:12-13; Matthew 7:7-11; Philippians 4:19; Isaiah 40:11; Romans 8:14-17, 38-39; 2 Thessalonians 3:5.
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Who is God? And who is God for me? There are many ways, many theologies, many systems-of-words which have tried to answer these, the most important questions humans have ever asked.

Some of these theologies concentrate on God’s essence (who he is); others on his activity (what he does); others still on his relationship with his human creatures (who he is for us). All fail to capture adequately the grandeur, the creativity, and the love of the God who has revealed himself in history to his people, through the Scriptures, in nature, in our consciences, in the events of the world, in our own lives, but ultimately in the life of Jesus Christ. Here we will simply look at three attributes of God: his greatness, his goodness, and his generosity.

1. God is great. All of the Christian saints affirm, with so many of the Psalmists, ‘Great is the Lord’. He is the sovereign ruler of the universe. All power and authority belong to him. He is not a passive spectator.

He is great in his ‘being’, beyond our comprehension or definition (any definition claiming to be adequate would be an idol of the mind).

He is great in wisdom. He is the one unto whom ‘all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden’.

So our prayer to him must begin with worship, with adoration. Some of the great hymns can help us: ‘Great God of wonders…’; ‘Jesus thou joy of loving hearts…’.

As one person lay dying of cancer he wrote: ‘All too often our faith is earth-bound and we find it hard to believe that God can do anything that our minds cannot explain. It is only as we spend time worshipping God, concentrating on the nature of his person, especially his greatness and his love, that our faith begins to rise’. (David Watson, Fear No Evil, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984, p.59).

So adoration and worship are therapeutic!

But we must add an important footnote here. The God who is incarnated in Jesus is the kind of God who, when he wants to show himself in our world, does so in weakness and poverty.

2. God is good. He is ‘for us’. When we call on him in the day of trouble, he will care for us (Psalm 50:15). As we read the biblical drama we find that he either delivers us from trouble, or in trouble. He is always there for us. He will never leave us or forsake us.

However, we are not to treat God as a lawyer or doctor, only going to him when we’ve got a problem. Some of us want our adolescent independence too soon! God is our father, and like little children we ought to learn to enjoy our father’s company in all the events of our lives. When a little girl said ‘God’s my best friend!’ she was uttering something that is at the heart of true spirituality.

He should become everything to us (‘What could be greedier’, remarks St. Augustine, ‘than a person for whom God is not enough?’) and everything we do should be done for his glory. We should want him to accomplish in our lives ‘all things according to the counsel of his will’ (Ephesians 1:11). When we really believe God is good it is easier to pray ‘not my will but yours….’

3. God delights to give gifts. There are thirty texts in the New Testament describing prayer as asking. Our Father delights to give gifts to us. Indeed, he is the ‘God of surprises’, who delights to give before we ask. Christian thought calls this aspect of God’s character ‘prevenient grace’ (Grace – God’s giving freely out of his love for us; prevenient – from the Latin ‘to go before’). We will notice these gifts all the time if we have developed the habit of living gratefully. True lovers think in terms of giving gifts to one another.

In a very real sense, of course, God’s best gift to us is himself. Our response? As the great commandment puts it, we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This is not the same as ‘getting religion’ – even the Christian religion; it is actively seeking and loving God himself.

Brother Lawrence was a lame, clumsy man who went to a monastery to atone somehow for his disabilities. He was put to work washing floors and kitchen pots and pans. In the midst of all this he ‘practised the presence of God.’ When he was dying his friends asked what he was thinking about. He replied, ‘I am doing what I shall do through all eternity – blessing God, praising God, adoring God, giving him the love of my whole heart.’

Charity, says the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, ‘is nought else but love of God for himself above all creatures.’

I love you, Lord,
not doubtingly but with absolute certainty.
Your Word beat upon my heart
until I fell in love with you
and now the universe
and everything in it
tells me to love you… (Augustine).
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The Masai called their god Engai. Well, that is no more strange- sounding than our gods. The god invoked by the pope to bless the troops of Mussolini about to embark on the plunder of Ethiopia, and the god invoked by an American cardinal to bless the `soldiers of Christ’ in Vietnam, and the god of French glory, and the German god of Hitler were no more the High God of Scripture than is `Diana of the Ephesians’ or Engai of the Masai of Eastern Africa.

Vincent J Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, London, SCM, 1985, p.46.

I have always been `surprised’ by life.

And as I believe that God is life, just as he is light and love, I have come to the conclusion that it is God himself who has `surprised’ me on my journey.

God is surprise. God is novelty. God is creativity…

I don’t know how it happened to you, but I know how it happened to me.

God arrived in my heart like a huge parable. Everything around me spoke to me of him.

The sky spoke to me of him,
the earth spoke to me of him,
the sea spoke to me of him.
He was like a secret hidden in all things,
visible and invisible.
He was like the solution to all problems.
He was like the most important person who had ever entered my
life and with whom I should have lived for ever…

The Good News is this: that God is God, that God is the God of the Impossible, he is the God who can make Sarah’s barren womb fruitful and separate the waters of the Red Sea.

He is a living God.
He is a God who guides.
He is a God who raises from the dead.
He is an Eternal God.
He is a God who wants me in his Kingdom for ever.

Carlo Carretto, The Desert in the City, London, Fount Paperbacks, 1983, pp. 9, 25-26, 58.

Something in us wants to insist on having [both] – God and health, God and riches, God and honour, God and long life… But God is so infinitely much more than these other things that in the end the `and’ bit does not add anything. All that is good and that belongs to our eternal joy is included in God, for God is all in all.

Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, p.39

Perceiving, as other mortals have not perceived, the burning love of God, the saint gives God love for love. He cannot help it. Certainly, it is not the fruit of labour. Having seen the love of God, his own love leaps in response. His heart is drawn out of him and lost in God’s immensity.

No mortal can love as God loves, but the saint loves with all that there is of him… It is by love that the saint becomes free – free of that aweful self-centredness which is the mark of most mortals… It is by love that we come to freedom, and there is no other way.

W.E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart, Epworth, 1954, pp. 242-243.

He had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and having resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. He was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking him only, and nothing else, not even his gifts…

‘I did not engage in a religious life but for the love of God, and I have endeavoured to act only for him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love him.’

Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God: the best rule of a holy life, being conversations and letters of Brother Lawrence, Epworth, nd., pp. 6-7.

O God, I love thee, I love thee –
Not out of hope of heaven for me
Not fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.
Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,

And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should not I love thee,
Jesus, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven’s sake; not to be
Out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst me
I do love and I will love thee:
What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.

Translated from the Latin by Gerard Manley Hopkins

[A fearful person said ‘I fear lest I should be cast into hell.’ Another anxious person said ‘I dread lest I should be deprived of the joy of heaven…] A third was very happy and contented. [He was asked] ‘What is the secret of your joy and peace?’ He said, ‘My constant prayer to God is that he may grant me to love him with heart and soul, and may serve and worship him by love alone. Should I worship him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve him from desire of gaining heaven, may he keep me out. But should I worship him from love alone, may he reveal himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with his love and presence.’

Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life, Christian Literature Society, 1926/1986, pp. 13-14. Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life

‘…When thoughts come, welcome them, and when they do not flow freely simply rest back and love, and grant Me the shared joy of being loved by you. For I, too, by my very nature, am hungry with an insatiable hunger for the love of all of you, just as your love reaches out at your highest moments to all the people about you. So child, I, even I, God, whom people have foolishly feared and flattered for my gifts, I want love and friendship more than I want grovelling subjects. So while we love each other, child, My share is as keen as yours.’

Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic, Lutterworth, 1957, p.30.

Thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked intent unto God… this darkness and this cloud… hindereth thee, so that thou mayest neither see him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason, nor feel him in sweetness of love in thy affection. And therefore shape thee to bide in this darkness as long as thou mayest, evermore crying after him whom thou lovest. For if ever thou shalt see him or feel him as it may be here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness… Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.

The Cloud of Unknowing: The Cloud of Unknowing, quoted in Michael Cox, Handbook of Christian Spirituality, Harper & Row, 1985, p.139.

When the next step comes, you do not take the step, you do not know the transition, you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere, and so you do not know the way by which you got there or the way by which you come back afterward. You are certainly not lost. You do not fly. There is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference.

The next step is not a step… And here all adjectives fall to pieces. Words become stupid. Everything you say is misleading – unless you list every possible experience and say: ‘That is not what it is.’ ‘That is not what I am talking about.’

What it is is freedom. It is perfect love. It is pure renunciation. It is the fruition of God… It is freedom living and circulating in God, who is Freedom. It is love loving in Love. It is the purity of God rejoicing in his own liberty.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Books, 1961, pp. 282-284.

To the few who are converted, goodness is pleasant, and needs no sanctions. It needs no authority, for it has been verified by experience. But when people have to be coerced into goodness it is plain that they do not care for it.

Walter Lippmann: Walter Lippmann, ‘A Preface to Morals’, Time, 1964, p.188.

The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord… Our Lord told his disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of his sayings would prove that we loved him, and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love… Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling…

If we would turn from fine-spun theological speculations about grace and faith, and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves, and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?

A.W. Tozer, ‘Love’s Final Test’, The Life of Faith, October 20, 1960.

‘Marvelously close, God, help me to keep thinking of You all day today, as love crowding gently as the ether, watm as the sunlight, into every nook and cranny of my thoughts, words, looks, acts – love pressing in, and oozing out, floating like perfume out to others.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.’

‘My child, this makes Me happy. Now let love flow out to My world of needy people all about you. Despise not one of the least. Do not see colour or clothes, just souls and My children. Do not hear titles or languages, just hear Me speak through them. I call from behind every eye, I float upon every wave of speech and song and sigh. See Me in people, for I seek to make them grow in Christlike love.’

Frank Laubach, Learning the Vocabulary of God
Frank Laubach, Learning the Vocabulary of God: A Spiritual Diary, Lutterworth, 1956, pp. 59-60.

In Graham Greene’s novel, The Heart of the Matter, Scobie is torn between love for his wife and his mistress, and decides to commit suicide. Sitting in his car he holds a very moving conversation with God, acknowledging that he is guilty before God and that he can no longer face the altar. ‘You’ll be better off when you lose me once and for all. You’ll be at peace when I’m out of your reach,’ he tells God.

God replies… ‘You say you love me, yet you’ll do this to Me – rob Me of you for ever. I made you with love. I’ve wept your tears… and now you push me away, put me out of your reach. I am as humble as any other beggar. Can’t you trust me as you’d trust a faithful dog? I’ve been faithful to you for 2000 years… Can’t you trust me to see that the suffering isn’t too great?’

Ivor Bailey, ‘Live and Let Love’
Ivor Bailey, ‘Live and Let Love’, a sermon preached from Maughan Church, Adelaide, July 9, 1972.
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I no longer want to build empires,
to ascend thrones,
or to be number one in my little kingdom.
I want to love you,
and to respond to your love for me
by communicating such love to others.
This is what I want, O Lord,
but you know my soft spots, my hang-ups.
May the victory be yours today, O Lord.
In Jesus’ name. Amen

Leslie F. Brandt, A Book of Christian Prayer: Leslie F. Brandt, A Book of Christian Prayer, Kingsway, 1978 p.10.

O merciful God, grant that I may always do your will perfectly in all things.
May it be my wish to work only for your honour and glory.
May I rejoice in nothing except what leads to you.
May I wish nothing that leads away from you.
May all passing things be as nothing in my eyes.
May all that is yours be dear to me and may you, my God, be dear to me above all things.
May I wish for nothing apart from you.
May all joys have no importance for me apart from you.
May all effort and work delight me when it is for you.

Thomas Aquinas, cited in Praying with the Saints Dublin, Veritas Publications, 1989, p.65.

No soul can have rest until it finds created things are empty. When the soul gives up all for love, so that it can have him that is all, then it finds true rest.

For he is endless and has made us for his own self only, and has restored us by his blessed Passion, and keeps us in his blessed love. And he does all this through his goodness.

God of goodness give me yourself, for you are enough for me and I may ask nothing that is less, that may be full worship to you. And if I ask anything that is less, I am always wanting – but only in you I have all.

Julian of Norwich, Showings, Chapter 5. cited in Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things, London, Fountain Paperbacks, 1987, p.48

O you Omnipotent goodness, you care for us all as if each of us were your only concern, and you look after each of us as if we were all one person…!

Eternal truth, truth of love, love of eternity! That’s what you are, my God, and that’s why day and night you form the breath of my being. When I first knew you, you lifted me up and I realised there was something to see, but I wasn’t quite capable of seeing it. My vision was too weak to stand the radiance of your glory, and I trembled with a combination of love and dread. I seemed to be a long way from you, in a far country, listening to your voice as it spoke to me from above, `I am the real food. Grow up and feed on me. But you will never change me into yourself as your digestion changes its food; rather you will be changed into my likeness’.

Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern English Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, pp.46, 95-96.

Lord, I am your child. In some mysterious sense, my Father, you are hungry for my love. Your love is mediated through words and the Word, through sunsets and rain and the whispering trees, soft shadows on the water. I was created for friendship with you, my Creator. I was redeemed for friendship with you, my Saviour. I am cared for for friendship with you, my ever-present Friend. Lord it’s not a self-improvement course I want, but you.

We taste thee, O thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon thee still.
We drink of thee the fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from thee to fill.

I have tasted a little of your goodness, Lord, and it has both satisfied me and made me hunger for more. My desire is to desire you more. Give me a gift of love – for you and for others. And to journey towards the final self- forgetfulness – to be absorbed into you forever.
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A Benediction: Keep yourselves in the love of God, as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life. May God’s grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying love. Benediction: Jude 21, Ephesians 6:24 (both GNB).