Thursday, October 16, 2008

Begin with Ourselves or God

If we begin with ourselves, then we miss God.

If what God requires of us, or what God desires for us, or what God makes possible for us, is circumscribed by what "I want" or by what "I can", then we are not talking about God, then we have no God. We have only ourselves. We have only what we want and what we are capable of seeing, desiring, and doing.

Yet it is at the very root of God's initiative to and for us that God makes possible and makes actual what we do not "want" and what we "cannot do." God loves us before we love him. God turns to us before we turn to him. And God's loving us and turning to us are absolutely constitutive of sheer existence (creation) and worthy existence (creation pronounced good, then redeemed after sin). These gracious truths are at the very root of God's good news to us.

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