God’s Work and Glory

If you knew everything, what would you choose to think about? If you could be everywhere, where would you choose to go? If you could do everything, what would you choose to do? I imagine that being omnipotent would bring with it a certain sense of boredom. There would be no challenge to anything you did, because you know you could do it. There would be no sense of suspense or anxiety, no feeling of effort or work. God has no limitations. He can go anywhere, know anything, do anything. But He has chosen to limit Himself when it comes to His children and especially their agency. God can do everything, but He chooses to allow us space to learn and grow. Suddenly, that sense of suspense and anxiety, that sense of effort and work is back for God. Because He will not swoop in with His omnipotence from moment to moment in each of our lives, there is some degree of uncertainty even for One who has Omniscience. I mean, sure, He knows us down to our individual atoms, and He knows the end results of each and every one of our choices, but because He has carved out a space in his Omnipotence for us to act according to our own wills and desires, He can’t know for certain which path we take until we take it. This has to give God a sense of purpose. It has to introduce meaning back into His existence. In every other facet of the universe, when God commands, obedience is inevitable. The winds and the waves heed his voice. The earth trembles at his command. But His children are given the power to choose whether or not we listen to His voice. He has to work to get us to obey His commandments. And when we actually offer Him our obedience, not because He wielded His omnipotent power and overwhelmed us, but because through patient and long-suffering ministrations He convinced us, that is His glory. He rejoices and revels in our obedience because we obey Him not through compulsion but through persuasion. That is why God focuses on us so intently. We fascinate Him. God knows that the rest of the universe will shape itself around His will, but we can only align ourselves to His will through a lot of effort and work on both our part and God’s. It is because of us that God has not only immortality but also eternal life. An immortal person can’t be killed, can’t be stopped, can’t be ignored. An immortal person eventually has all power, all knowledge, all presence. But eternal life comes from that continual sense of purpose, of having children with the potential to become like us, but with the all important power to choose to become not like us. With immortality there is no struggle because nothing can resist us. But with eternal life, there is an eternal struggle, there is that work and that effort to convince every new soul to follow in our footsteps and to become like us.