HINENI

Religious belief is a largely empirical and often inexpressible matter of faith. Indeed I think one of the greatest traps is to talk to a fellow human being and assume that your belief is the same as theirs.We all walk different paths in life and every relationship with God is unique. To believe otherwise is largely the reason that the history of religion is soaked in so much blood.

But I do believe that God has left us three unmistakable signs of his presence. Wisdom, beauty and love.

Wisdom makes our world intelligible to a remarkable degree. Is mathematics a question of solving the equation or was the equation waiting to be discovered? It doesn't matter God allows us to look over his shoulder and the handbook of existence and grow in understanding as we watch him turn the pages of time.

Beauty is a glimpse of what lays behind the veil it points to the essence of heaven and a God of love. True beauty is always intrinsically good and human love at its best has the spark of divinity as it has a metaphysical presence with is unmistakable.

God is all around us but we choose to ignore him but the spirit of revolt is inseparable from the process as true love can only come about with an alternative. This inevitably means pain and suffering come as part of the package as CS Lewis wrote ' God cannot make a square circle'. What is essential to the maturing of our souls? all good must have an opposite or have no meaning. The best needs the worst or it has no value. Harsh, certainly except for all the possible alternatives we can perceive given the nature of being.

Creation I believe is an inescapable manifestation of divine joy which is mirrored in our own desires. Was God compelled to create? If so he tied his own hands and Jesus can't be seen as ' a crisis in the life of God' but an inevitability. Creation by a God of love comes with its own rule book of consequences but they are better than nothingness or all the alternatives.