Studying history in school left me with the belief that the future is driven by the past. The present is inexorably prodded into the future. Cause launches effect, creating a chain of events that started with creation and leads to this moment now.
Where does that leave God? It would seem that in this scenario God's function would be to periodically intervene in the process and change outcomes that might otherwise unfold. Miracles might confirm this train of thought; God hovering over the present, as at creation, acting on the chain of events developing in His world as He sees fit.
But what if I am wrong? What if there were a different way of looking at things, this story we find ourselves in? A father takes his infant son a few feet from his mother and stands him up while his mother beckons him to her. The toddler takes a few steps, to the delight of all. The baby is not consciously trying to walk. He only wants to come and receive the gift of his mother's presence being offered across the room.
Maybe the present is not being pushed into the future after all. Maybe the past has always been pushed out of the present by a future that is constantly rushing in.
It feels somehow right to say that God is all of this and more. The creator unleashed history in the beginning. God helps the baby to stand in the beginning. But God is also out ahead, calling history homeward across the room. God doesn't force it. Sometimes history responds, or some parts do, but others resist or rebel. And still God keeps calling.
If this is in the least bit accurate, if we are not pushed by our past or engineered by our present, but being pulled, invited, called into a future that keeps coming to us as a gift - then God is waiting to give Himself as a gift just across the room.
"Who hopes for what he already has?" (Rom 8:24)
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