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The Week

The Week September 4, 2016

God is all beauty, goodness, and truth.

Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

The Question
What does God want
most of all for you (3)?
God exists, and there is something above all else that He wants for you. That is to know Him. Anyone who does know God understands why this is not only what Godshould most of all want for us, but also what weshould want above all else for ourselves as well.

For, as we have seen, God is all beauty. He is all that brings pleasure and delight without any sense of shame or guilt. God is that complete and perfect beauty which delights, ennobles, edifies, purifies, and satisfies wholly. Human beings are strongly attracted to things beautiful, but because our sense of beauty can be misleading, we require a knowledge of true beauty if we are to realize our highest aspirations for delight and pleasure. That above all else which can satisfy our need for beauty, and which alonecan lead us into true beauty, is God.

But God is not merely all beauty; He is also all goodness. By this we mean that God is of such a nature as to make it possible for others to flourish and be fulfilled, and in their flourishing to encourage and enable others to flourish and be fulfilled as well.

God is all goodness. He gives being to all creatures and vitality to living things. He sustains the vast cosmos at every level, in a manner so comprehensive, faithful, and strong that we think of the universe as being governed by physical laws. But the so-called laws of nature do not prescribe the way the matter and forces of the cosmos must consist, cohere, and cooperate. Instead, the laws which scientists routinely employ to understand the world describe the goodness of God as He acts continuously upon the creation in all its forms – His wisdom, power, kindness, generosity, and faithfulness working to provide being and fulfillment for every creature.

God is good, and He works for the good of all His creatures, in particular, those who have come to know Him and who recognize His goodness, seek to know more of it, and work to express His goodness in the form of love. Love does no ill to others, but seeks their edification and flourishing. Selfless love, love which promotes the wellbeing of others, is the supreme expression of goodness because it refracts into the temporal sphere the goodness of God toward all He has made.

God is good. His love for His creatures is everywhere in evidence to those willing to observe it.

It is something of a conundrum, of course, that, given the fact that God is all beauty and all goodness, the world presents so much that is ugly and not good, even to the point of suggesting that wickedness, cruelty, oppression, and ugliness are the norm of the world. There is truth to this, but that truth can only be fully understood in the light of God and His truth concerning the world.

For not only is God all beauty and goodness; He is also all truth. With respect to reality, the way things are and ought to be, God alone tells it like it is, and tells it like it should be. God is truth. He enables us to know the world and life in ways that are reliable, coherent, rational, personal, dependable, and safe. The truth about the world, as God explains it, is that while there is much of beauty and goodness to know in the world – the result of God’s continuous care for His creatures – ugliness and wickedness are also present. This is because of the presence in the world of a principle of rebellion against and rejection of God and His beauty, goodness, and truth. Where God is rejected and people refuse to know Him, rebellion leads to distortions of God’s beauty and goodness, distortions that can demean, corrupt, and destroy whatever comes into rebellion’s power.

We all live in this world of rebellion, in which the principle of rejection of God in His beauty and goodness – a principle which God, in His truth, describes as sin – affects us in every area of our lives. Indeed, every one of us participates in this rebellion and thus contributes to the misery and frustration of the world.

However, God is not content for us to be trapped in the distortion, the lie, of rebellion and rejection, so that we know only glimpses and tastes of beauty and goodness, while we remain trapped in the confusion, uncertainty, doubt, and fear in which a want of truth confines us.

God intends that we should know Him, and in knowing Him, to experience beauty, goodness, and truth in ways that bring us into God’s original intention for the creation, and that point forward to a coming time when that intention will at last be realized.

So that, in knowing God, we may enjoy the pleasures of beauty, indulge and express the goodness of love, and understand and shape our world in ways that refract the truth and light of God into the distortions and darkness of a rebellious world.

God wants most of all that you should know Him. And as He is all beauty, goodness, and truth, knowing Him – really and increasingly – should be what we want most of all for ourselves as well.

But what does it mean to know God? How can we know when we know Him? What must we do or where must we go in order to receive from God that which He wants most of all for us?

We’ll begin to look at those questions next. For now, let’s review the week of offerings at The Fellowship of Ailbe website, just in case you missed anything.

Weekly Review
I encourage you, if you have not already, to subscribe to our Scriptorium and ReVision newsletters. Each morning Scriptorium brings you studies in God’s Word, using questions and meditations to guide you into a deeper understanding of Him and His will. We are about to finish our studies in the book of Acts, after which we will begin a panoramic overview of Scripture, following the unfolding of God’s covenant throughout. You can download each week’s daily studies in a free PDF form on Monday of each week.

Our new ReVision series includes five weekly installments on The Parameters of Prayer. This week’s study examined The Promise of Prayer in order to encourage us to make better use of this discipline. In the week ahead we will consider The Primacy of Prayer in order to discover the place Jesus intends prayer should have in our lives.

This week our Crosfigell columns focused on our calling to identify and work our Personal Mission Fields. You can read the installments of this week’s Crosfigell columns by clicking here. Then watch a video on Personal Mission Field by clicking here, download your Personal Mission Field worksheet, and get started realizing more of the presence, promise, and power of the Kingdom, right where you are.

In Thursday’s The Week installment, we considered the lamentable absence of a Christian mind – the mind of Christ – guiding the work of the Christian community in our country, and offered some suggestions for beginning to recover the mind of Christ before we lose our presence as a community.

Saturday’s In the Gates column shows why honoring our parents must be a high priority in our lives, one of several key values which we must work to embed in our consciences.

Visit our website and bookstore to discover additional resources and publications to help you in your walk with and work for the Lord. Subscribe to more of our instructional newsletters. Read John Nunnikhoven’s daily Voices Together column. And while you’re at the website, watch the videos introducing our Men’s Prayer Movement and offering you an opportunity to assess the state of your Christian worldview.

T. M. Moore

We’re happy to provide The Week and other online resources at no charge. If this ministry is helpful to you, please prayerfully consider joining those who support our work financially. It’s easy to give to The Fellowship of Ailbe, and all gifts are, of course, tax-deductible. You can click here to donate online through credit card or PayPal, or send your gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 19 Tyler Drive, Essex Junction, VT 05452.

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
Books by T. M. Moore

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