All things among themselves possess an order, and that order is the form that makes the universe like God.

Wednesday, 8/3/16

God, in the first reading, as he is bringing his people back from captivity, said, “With an old Love I have loved you.”

I have just picked up a book called “Quest for the Living God.” And that name’s implication that God must be searched for, seems to reject what Paul said about God in his address at the Areopagus, “He is not far from any of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.

Elizabeth A Johnson, the author of "Quest for the Living God," laid down here three rules for that search. She said:

!. Know that he is so far above us that he is can’t be understood.

2. Know that no name for God can be taken literally.

3. Know that we still must keep trying out new names.

The Bible calls God our Father and Yahweh, and by many other names, but I am more sure of myself when I approach God through nature and science.  Sitting out on my porch, I consider how my body is composed ef of five trillion cells, with the core of each cell containing the DNA from which I could be cloned.

In the third volume of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante asked Beatrice how, while everything in heaven was new to him, it all seemed somehow familiar. Her answer was, “All things among themselves possess an order, and this order is the form that makes the universe like God.”

In line with that, I like considering that simple element we call Oxygen. It is everywhere, sustaining life, and every single mom of Oxygen has its eight electrons orbiting its cell in the same patterns. It’s that way because God has it that way.