A Mature Spirituality?

I'm hoping that I have a simple little mind that just doesn't understand what Elizabeth is saying in chapter 37. For the moment, I am assuming this is the case until someone can explain it to me. To say that God is powerless to affect our day-to-day situation strikes me as simply provocative and irresponsible, if not, as she asks, downright heresy.

Okay, so I've said my peace on the negative side here, but there is a chord that is struck when I begin to think of the rest of the context of this book. While I don't believe that God is powerless without us, I do believe that God chooses to work in this world through us. Assuming all of the necessary preamble about comparisons between us and Christ, I think that there is an analogy that can be drawn between the way God has Jesus announce and demonstrate the Kingdom and the way that we are to continually do the same today. After all, we believe that we are co-heirs with Christ and further, co-workers in and with the Spirit.

We are called out by God to be his people and we are called to be about his work which comes as a natural overflow of who we are in Christ. What an exciting image to consider as we think about being on a work-team with Christ as the head of this group and the Father as the CEO of all. However, to take the next step and use the metaphor of a family, an image of inter-connectedness among each other and from the Spirit to the natural and back again...it becomes mind-boggling to try to begin to understand our relationship to God and how we can be part of the work he is wanting to accomplish.

Of course I must realize that God placed himself in the ultimate place of vulnerability in the form of Jesus. I also see, though, that Christ was not at all powerless. He was not merely a man. He was...He is...God. I AM. That is his identification. There is no lack of power in him. I believe the Son was right there with the Father in creation. This act did not require a man to perform and I believe it could be argued that this was God's greatest work, at least from the history that we are privy to know and understand.

God knows that a man must relate to another for love to take on its fullest bonding power. I believe God's ultimate desire is to love his people, to be loved in return, and furthermore form those same bonds amongst his people. As my wife has said, a powerless God would not have come in the form of weakness, so we must correctly understand the beauty of the vulnerability with which the Son came and how God speaks to us now. It is the lover's whisper continually calling us back to intimacy to which we must decide to accept or reject. Acceptance propels us to a new level of obedience and a living out of our calling, foresaking all others in this effort.

I remember the story in the Gospels when the people are asking for a sign, a miracle, to be performed to confirm that Jesus was the Christ. Of course he could have given them what they had asked for. He had done many miracles already. It would have been a mistake for these people to assume that Jesus was powerless at this time to perform these signs. On the face of the statements that O'Connor makes, I believe she makes the same incorrect assumption. God is powerful enough to perform any movement of his will that he chooses, but just like Jesus, he wants us to have the relationship with him. He is not powerless, but instead wants to use his power to enable and empower us, to show his glory through the movement of his relationships and not necessarily his great works. In this way, men will follow and the Kingdom will grow from a seed into a great tree with deep roots, many branches, and is teeming alive with leaves that reach further and further into the sky in an effort to take the next inch for the sake of the one who planted the tree where it stands today