Mitch Dobrowner, 'Storm Over Field'
Deus, cuius providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur, te supplices exoramus ut noxia cuncta submoveas et omnia nobis profutura concedas. Per.
O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Collect for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity)
For a devout person, the Acknowledgement of this collect is self-evident: since God is omnipotent, His providence orders all things in heaven and earth, and cannot fail. For one who lives in the world with open eyes, however, it seems at first little short of monstrous. For taken literally it means that everything that occurs is intended so to happen by God: which would then include earthquakes, tsunamis, the St Batholomew’s Massacre, Passchendaele, torture, lynchings, Chernobyl and homo homini lupus.
How, then should we take it? For the dogma of Divine omnipotence is not in doubt. With one exception, I have always said. God can do anything, except go against his own nature. And since His nature is Love, and Love cannot include compulsion, He cannot force men to return His love. Hence, they are free; and when they choose the Adversary, who delights in cruelty and revels in blood and suffering, God weeps hot cosmic tears. It is not up to Him, it is up to us to return His love for us, and to persuade others that (to quote another Collect) ‘in knowledge of Him standeth [their] eternal life, and that in His service is perfect freedom’.
That leaves the earthquakes and the tsunamis, which even insurance companies call Acts of God. We have learnt, over the ages and with the growth of science, that in fact they are acts of nature and the elements. Can God prevent them? Technically, perhaps He could: Exodus tells us that He intervened at the Sea of Reeds. But as I have said elsewhere, it seems unlikely that God micromanages His creation. He may see each sparrow that falls, but He does not stop its falling. It seems more probable that what matters to Him is the human heart. It is the heart that He loves; and if it knows and loves Him in return, then it, and all it touches, is ‘ordered by His never-failing providence’. It can still, as a child to a loving father, ask Him to put away from us all hurtful things and give us what will do us good; but it trusts Him to do so according to His will and insight, which may not be the same as our wishes and desires.
But among the earthquakes and tsunamis are also the hideous medical afflictions that blight some lives. And here it is all at its hardest: these are the real tests of our re-ligio. The only decent response to these, for those of us untouched by them, is humility and silence: to do what we can to help when we come into contact with them, but in no way to preach to their victims. We can and must pray for them; and what we can pray is that they may come to, or remain in, the knowledge and love of God, and that if it be His will, their infirmities may be relieved. For history is full of the stories of extreme sufferers whose faith nevertheless so shone about them as to bless and comfort their entourage. We may admire and be inspired by them; but if we are moderately healthy, humility and silence is still our watchword. God’s providence never fails: His grace always prevents and follows and accompanies us, and we have access to it in all times and in all places; but His ways are, it is true, sometimes dark to our understanding. Hence humility; silence; and prayer. Always and everywhere: prayer.
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