"God is a God of life"

These words may challenge those who think of God as uninvolved or not very concerned about His creation or as one who is just sitting back to see how badly we mess up or how good we can make the world on our own. I just thought this was worth sharing. What do you think?

"We cannot comprehend God's presence, not because it is somehow lacking, but because of its surplus. ... We're tangling with the Other nonstop all the time. It's what is all along creating, sustaining, and redeeming us. We don't live or breathe or walk or talk outside of our relationship with God. We are so tangled in it, so thoroughly and completely in it, we can't comprehend it. It comprehends us. This is all outrageous and odd and pretty much the central point of Christianity. We live by the grace of God."




"We seem to have idolatry in our DNA. But maybe at the deepest level we are not idolaters; we are people who need relationship. We are created in and for communion. We need love and relationship to breathe. But somehow, allowing ourselves to enter into communion, or to be who we really are, is more difficult or scary or unsettling than giving our lives to our belief systems, cultural codes, ideologies -- our idols that aren't alive. And our idolatry freezes and fixes and suffocates and knots and nooses and guts and stuffs and kills.

"The Bible witnesses, however, to a God who keeps calling us into life; keeps creating life, life, and more life, bringing life from barren wombs and shoots out of dead stumps; actually resurrecting.

"This may seem like a bit much, but the Bible presses on and on: God is a God of life.



"What could God be thinking, calling us into everlasting life? It might seem more responsible of God to call us to a simple coherent system, to organize a schedule of burnt offerings, to give us a way to redeem ourselves by following orders or rules or whatever, instead of redeeming us in relationship through love. It's frustrating. It's gorgeous.

"The Bible witnesses to the entirely deathless one, to the living Word. It calls us to relationship with the Other." (pg.31-32)

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. " -- Jesus (John 10:10)


Quotes (stuff in green) by Debbie Blue in From Stone to Living Word