THE ALMIGHTY AND MERCIFUL GOD AND CREATOR IS ABSOLUTELY IN CHARGE OF HIS CREATION

My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True Lord, God, and Savior,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

THE ALMIGHTY AND MERCIFUL GOD AND CREATOR IS
ABSOLUTELY IN CHARGE OF HIS CREATION.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not
one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s
will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered"
[Matthew 10:29-30].

From the very beginning, our Creator God has revealed Himself to mankind. He never ceases to reach out to His creation with abundant blessings, desiring all to freely partake of the personal communion He offers. The Holy Scripture also establishes that it was humanity who rejected Him, following after the selfish desire to be as God. Certainly humanity has afflicted itself with this delusion. Even so, the human race, even in its fallen state, is unable to deter God’s unceasing ministry to His people. The Holy Bible records this ongoing spiritual struggle between the loving truth of God and man’s deluded expression of pride.

Once the truth of God is accepted, and a person surrenders his pride and his denial of reality, his eyes become open to Christ our God, Whose Divine Light invisibly enters in. This is what we call holiness, and therefore only in genuine holiness can we begin to understand the Holy Bible and experience God revealed in it. The Sacred Scripture and the histories of the Martyrs bear witness to the glory of God as it enters us. They also witness to us the terrible price that people pay when they refuse to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty Creator and Fashioner.

We all know for a fact that human beings still struggle to believe in God; some deny His existence and presence, and others wish to replace God with themselves. Under communism in the Soviet Union, Stalin who was a tyrant, murderer, and of course an atheist, forced the Orthodox Christians replace the holy icon of Christ in their homes with his own picture. The caesars in ancient Rome demanded that Christians reject the one true God and replace Him with themselves, since they considered themselves as gods, or a deity, and for all their subjects to worship them and offer sacrifices to them. Even currently in the 21st century there are the so called elite, the very rich and powerful, in society, that they too should be worshipped as gods.

We are reminded of Jesus’ words Who asked, "O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?" [Mark 9:19]. THe Almighty God is patient with us knowing full well that His Divine will prevail at the end. Whatever God wills that is what will happen; for His will is absolute and final. Mankind is diluted to believe that it is in charge of the destiny of the world just because it possesses military or nuclear power. Humanity does not have the slightest idea or ability to conceive the magnitude of God’s power. How can the creature be more powerful than its Creator? Are we to repeat the defiant and arrogant people who said, "Come, let us build a city and a tower, whose top will reach to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves" [Genesis 11:4]. This is the symbolic account of the ultimate impudence of men who sought "to make a name for themselves" by building "a tower with its top in the heavens". Through the story of the tower of Babel is shown the PRIDEFUL ARROGANCE OF MAN WHICH RESULTS IN THE DIVISION OF THE NATIONS AND THE SCATTERING OF MEN "OVER THE FACE OF ALL THE EARTH" [Genesis 11:9]. The sinful and corrupt people believed they were achieving their aims without God.

From the above story of the Tower of Babel we learn that mankind was united in "one race and one language." But this unity existed WITHOUT the Holy Trinity, for man’s unity is UNION AND COMMUNION WITH THE Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Church is "the race of Christians", a "holy nation" [1 Peter 2:9], and glorifies God "with…one mouth" [Romans 15:6] in the Great Litany, the Church prays "for the union of all men," union based on the Holy Trinity. The Lord divided this false union of the defiant and corrupt people for the sake of man’s salvation, that man might seek and find Him [Acts 17:26-28]. Because they sought to build their unity by making a name for themselves. They cared nothing for the name of the Lord God, by which man is saved.

As Orthodox Christians we are taught through the Holy Scripture that the Almighty God’s sovereignty is an essential aspect of who He is, that He has supreme authority and absolute power over all things. God works "all things according to the counsel of His will" [Ephesians 1:11]. In the Book of Genesis He says to Adam who had disobeyed Him, "Cursed is the ground in our labors. In toil you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground from which you were taken. Earth you are, and to earth you shall return" [Genesis 3:17-19]. A revelation of Who God and Creator is, and man who is just "earth."

As Orthodox Christians we understand that we are to obey and trust our Creator and Savior in everything. The holy Apostle Paul reminds us, "just as He chose us in Him [Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us in adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved" [Ephesians 1:4-6]. Everything comes from God, and everything should be drawn back to Him. God’s original intent for the Incarnation was not redemption from the fall but "adoption as sons" of God, that is THEOSIS (Deification). For when contemplated creating the world, He planned on bringing it into union with Himself through the Incarnation of His Son, that is, through
the Son’s union with human nature. That is why Saint Athanasius can say, "God became man, that man might become god."

____________
"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
+ + +

With sincere agape in His Divine and Glorious Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George