God’s sensitivity
The notion of some infinitely gentle,
Infinitely suffering thing. TS Eliot
Read Isaiah 43:22—28
Let me enter in. I feel that at this point God is almost asking me to hold his hand. I thought I was taught somewhere — didn’t they used to say God is “impassible”? Wasn’t that supposed to be the truth of it? Let me look that up. Here it is: that God was unchanging? That God had to have no inadequacies of any kind in order to be God? So God could never be affected by me, could never have any complaints. God could breeze through eternity untouched by the events that throw me. Now I am met by such a complaint from God that I feel I have the power of the bully over God. My sins burden and weary and scandalise God. Yet, all undeserved, he makes these very burdens, this weariness and this scandal over and done and gone and forgotten and no longer active. Past tense. The outcome of these thoughts: that I should know the infinite and precious and holy sensitivity that my Father really is.
Prayer
Dear Father, I am so sorry. I am so sorry that my dishonour hurts and offends who you are. I am so sorry that I have not even respected your pain. I have had myself as my own centre and I have treated you as though you have a life of your own independent of me. Yet you have chosen not to be God without me. All my shames offend who you are. I thank you for your infinite love in forgetting my past sin, and pray that I may honour you in valuing the beauty of your holiness and in hungering and thirsting for it.