Use the schema explained above: Tell God about the situation, listen to God and scripture, dialogue with God as you reflect.
Step 1: Talk to God
Dear God, the heavens declare your glory. Who, but You, could have created all that we see? You are Other. We say Hallowed Be Thy Name. Do we say that with fear or with love? Do we love your Name or do we fear your Name? Can we be too familiar, can we mistakenly humanize your, make You “smaller,” make You fit into our conception of You? I know that your ways are inscrutable, but I trust them. I cannot say that I know the mind of the Lord, or pretend to speak for You. Yet your Son, the Word, is in our midst, has taken on our humanity to accompany us. This Jesus has revealed You to us. He calls you Abba and He calls us friends. He makes us sisters and brothers so that we don’t know the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, but Jesus has given us a glimpse.
When we say, Hallowed be Thy Name, can we be saying that we love You, that we acknowledge Your Name as above any other Name, but that we say it with a sense of intimacy that is not bold on our part but rather a gift on Your part. You have made us a little less than the angels, you made us in Your image, we don’t fear You, we fear ourselves. We fear what we might do as individuals and as a people, a church, a country. Lord, may your intimacy with us, that is your gift, enlighten us to do your will on earth as it is in heaven. May it drive us to bring about your kingdom by aiding the widow, the orphan and the alien. May we do it because we have a brief glimpse of the Love that is You.
Deliver us from fear by bringing us into the intimacy shared by Father, Son and Spirit. May we have intimacy with real God, not the gods of our creation. Let it be an intimacy that leads to right actions on Your behalf and on behalf of the least of us. Lord, may piety not be a distraction that makes us deaf to the cries of our fellow humans because we think our piety has it all sewn up.
Lord, we know you do whatever you will, with all-loving power, do with us as you will.
Step 2: Listen to God in Scripture
| Isaias 46(God both near and far, intimate and exalted)
1 Thus says the LORD to his anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I grasp, Subduing nations before him, stripping kings of their strength, Opening doors before him, leaving the gates unbarred:
2 I will go before you and level the mountains; Bronze doors* I will shatter, iron bars I will snap.
3 I will give you treasures of darkness, riches hidden away, That you may know I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by name.
4 For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel my chosen one, I have called you by name, giving you a title, though you do not know me.
5 I am the LORD, there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you do not know me,
6 so that all may know, from the rising of the sun to its setting, that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other. I form the light, and create the darkness, I make weal and create woe; I, the LORD, do all these things.
8 Let justice descend, you heavens, like dew from above, like gentle rain let the clouds drop it down. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth; let righteousness spring up with them! I, the LORD, have created this.
9 Woe to anyone who contends with their Maker; a potsherd among potsherds of the earth!* Shall the clay say to the potter, “What are you doing?” or, “What you are making has no handles”? 10 Woe to anyone who asks a father, “What are you begetting?” or a woman, “What are you giving birth to?”
11 Thus says the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, his maker: Do you question me about my children, tell me how to treat the work of my hands?
12 It was I who made the earth and created the people upon it; It was my hands that stretched out the heavens; I gave the order to all their host.
13 It was I who stirred him up for justice; all his ways I make level. He shall rebuild my city and let my exiles go free Without price or payment, says the LORD of hosts.
14 Thus says the LORD: The earnings of Egypt, the gain of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, tall of stature, Shall come over to you and belong to you; they shall follow you, coming in chains. Before you they shall bow down, saying in prayer: “With you alone is God; and there is none other, no other god!
15 Truly with you God is hidden, the God of Israel, the savior! 16 They are put to shame and disgrace, all of them; they go in disgrace who carve images. 17 Israel has been saved by the LORD, saved forever! You shall never be put to shame or disgrace in any future age.”
18 For thus says the LORD, The creator of the heavens, who is God, The designer and maker of the earth who established it, Not as an empty waste did he create it, but designing it to be lived in: I am the LORD, and there is no other.
19 I have not spoken in secret from some place in the land of darkness, I have not said to the descendants of Jacob, “Look for me in an empty waste.” I, the LORD, promise justice, I declare what is right. 20 Come and assemble, gather together, you fugitives from among the nations! They are without knowledge who bear wooden idols and pray to gods that cannot save.
21 Come close and declare; let them take counsel together: Who announced this from the beginning, declared it from of old? Was it not I, the LORD, besides whom there is no other God? There is no just and saving God but me.
22 Turn to me and be safe, all you ends of the earth, for I am God; there is no other!
23 By myself I swear, uttering my just decree, a word that will not return: To me every knee shall bend; by me every tongue shall swear,
24 Saying, “Only in the LORD are just deeds and power. Before him in shame shall come all who vent their anger against him.
25 In the LORD all the descendants of Israel shall have vindication and glory. |
Romans 11: 33-36
33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord*
or who has been his counselor?”
35 * “Or who has given him anything
that he may be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
From the treatise “Against the Heresies” by St Irenaeus
Knowledge of the Father consists in the self-revelation of the Son
No one can know the Father apart from God’s Word, that is, unless the Son reveals him, and no one can know the Son unless the Father so wills. Now the Son fulfils the Father’s good pleasure: the Father sends, the Son is sent, and he comes. The Father is beyond our sight and comprehension; but he is known by his Word, who tells us of him who surpasses all telling. In turn, the Father alone has knowledge of his Word. And the Lord has revealed both truths. Therefore, the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father by his revelation of himself. Knowledge of the Father consists in the self-revelation of the Son, for all is revealed through the Word.
The Father’s purpose in revealing the Son was to make himself known to us all and so to welcome into eternal rest those who believe in him, establishing them in justice, preserving them from death. To believe in him means to do his will.
Through creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator. Through the world he reveals the Lord who made the world. Through all that is fashioned he reveals the craftsman who fashioned it all. Through the Son the Word reveals the Father who begot him as Son. All speak of these things in the same language, but they do not believe them in the same way. Through the law and the prophets the Word revealed himself and his Father in the same way, and though all the people equally heard the message not all equally believed it. Through the Word, made visible and palpable, the Father was revealed, though not all equally believed in him. But all saw the Father in the Son, for the Father of the Son cannot be seen, but the Son of the Father can be seen. The Son performs everything as a ministry to the Father, from beginning to end, and without the Son no one can know God. The way to know the Father is the Son. Knowledge of the Son is in the Father, and is revealed through the Son. For this reason the Lord said: No one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son has revealed him. The word “revealed” refers not only to the future – as though the Word began to reveal the Father only when he was born of Mary; it refers equally to all time. From the beginning the Son is present to creation, reveals the Father to all, to those the Father chooses, when the Father chooses, and as the Father chooses. So, there is in all and through all one God the Father, one Word and Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation for all who believe in him. |
Put together what you said to God and what God said to you. Dialogue.