God’s Pleasure
Today’s Vigils reading from a treatise by St Cyprian tells us: ‘We should know and remember that when we call God our Father, we must behave as children of God, so that whatever pleasure we take in having God for our Father, he may take the same pleasure in us.’ I am brought to think of an observation the Reverend John Ames makes in Gilead: ‘Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behaviour, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgemental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it? […] I do like Calvin’s image, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us.’ A wonderful perspective.
