Chapter 1. Where People Find God (Divine Energy: God Beyond Us, Within Us, Among Us) (Dorr, Donal)

Many Christians feel an urge, or at least a duty, to share their knowledge and love of God with others-perhaps with their children or neighbours, or perhaps with people living halfway round the globe. But it is important to be aware that God is already at work among the people to whom we reach out with our Good News. So, if we wish to touch others by letting them in on our experience of God, our first task is one of entering into their lives and getting sufficiently close to them to discover some of the many ways in which God is already present in them. When people feel that we are truly in solidarity with them some will talk to us about the ways in which they experience God. In other cases their rituals, symbols or behaviour will show more clearly than their words the situations in which they feel in touch with God. It may also happen that the presence of God in people's lives is so intangible or so taken for granted that they scarcely advert to it. In such cases the most important service we can do may well be to help them to recognize and name the God whose presence is real but not yet clearly acknowledged.

First we offer an outline of a variety of situations, both personal and communal, in which people often have a sense of being touched by a mysterious power which lifts them beyond their immediate concerns. This transcendent power may be experienced as a mystery of wonder, peace and joy, or a source of boundless life and creativity, or a power which brings healing, forgiveness, hope and triumph over evil. Experiences of this kind can be found both in the lives of individuals and in the history or present experience of whole peoples. In societies or cultures which are overtly religious these may be named as experiences of the presence of God. In more secular societies people may be more reserved or hesitant in attributing such experiences to God, but it is not uncommon for people to recognize their religious or spiritual character.

The Skies

From time immemorial people have looked up to the heavens and felt their hearts drawn to praise God as creator of its wonder and beauty. This sense of the power and majesty of God is well expressed by the psalmist:

Praise God sun and moon
Praise God all you shining stars!
(Ps 148:3)

The heavens reveal the glory of God!
The skies proclaim God's handiwork!
(Ps 19:1)

When I look at the heavens you have made,
at the moon and the stars which you set in their places
-what are we that you should think of us,
mere humans that you should care for us?
(Ps 8:3-4)

The Sun

In ancient times, people living in Northern climates were keenly aware of their total dependence on the sun for food and life. So it is not surprising that they worshipped the sun as a manifestation of God. Even today, anybody who stands in the midst of the ancient stone shrines of Celtic peoples can share something of their religious experience. One who is privileged to watch the rising sun of the mid-Winter solstice light up the inner heart of the rock sanctuary of Newgrange may begin to have some sense of the religious awe of the ancients who year after year experienced the triumph of light and life over darkness and death.

The Mountains

Many mountains in Africa are revered and feared by the local people. They are seen as sacred places, the abode of God or the spirits. The Celts, too, saw the mountains as holy places. Practically every mountain in Ireland has a sacred mound on its summit where the sun-God was worshipped. Right up to the present time thousands of people go on pilgrimage to the tops of the mountains (Croagh Patrick, M� M�in, Slemish, etc). Alone or with others, enduring extremes of wind, hail and rain, or (more rarely) lifted out of ourselves by balmy sunshine, we worship the God who is manifested in the power and beauty of nature.

The Waters

Many peoples find God in the life-giving energy of the waters-in the majesty and power of the ocean, or the sparkling beauty of flowing streams or the bubbling new life of a spring.

The ocean depths raise their voice, O God,
They raise their voice and roar ...
Greater than the roar of mighty waters,
more powerful than the waves of the sea
Is our God who rules on high. (Ps 93:4)

Along the West African coast, worshippers gather at the sea-shore to worship; through the surge of the waves and the ebb and flow of the tides they come in touch with the life-giving energy of God. Nowadays, this worship usually takes a Christian form; but behind this is a much longer history of traditional worship. This sense of the ocean as a place of religious inspiration was brought by African people to Brazil when they were carried there as slaves; and it still forms an important aspect of Afro-Brazilian cults. The Celts, too, had a deep sense of the religious value of water. Long before the coming of Christianity, every townland in Ireland had its holy well. The holy well was a source of life and energy for the healthy and of healing for the sick. St Patrick and the other missionaries who spread the Christian faith in Ireland wisely incorporated this traditional worship into the new religion.

Over the past century many leading philosophers and theologians tended to see the God of Nature and the Cosmos as a 'primitive' or 'undifferentiated' understanding of the divine. They held that among 'advanced' peoples it took second place to a more historical concept of God such as that which is common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These historical religions are no longer confined to the recurrent cycles of nature. They are linked to a linear concept of history-a history in which God intervenes actively through such events as the Exodus, the call of prophets, or the life and death of Jesus.

The central event of the history of the Jewish people was their rescue from slavery in Egypt. This saving historical event was the guarantee that they were God's chosen people. In times of trouble they looked back to the Exodus as the proof that God would save them. They also looked forward. Peering into the future of their own nation and of the wider world, they fashioned an ideal of the future Reign of God on the basis of their experience of the saving God of the Exodus. So the awareness of history brought an enormous enrichment to the Jewish people's experience of God. There are indications that the very notion of human history was itself the result of the revelation of God.{1} It sprang from a new kind of religious experience�that of God as the origin and the goal of a people's journey.

When the religion of a people takes a historical form it opens up the individual members of that people to experience God not merely in their collective history but also in their own personal story. Contemplation of the call of Isaiah, or Jesus, or Mohammed may awaken in each of us an awareness of the ways in which God has intervened in my life to call me, to lead me, to challenge me, or to rescue me.

In recent years many religious people have begun to question the supposed superiority of a God who is seen primarily as 'The Lord of History'. For there is a good deal of disillusionment both with Western technology and with the 'historical' religions which are often seen as irremediably patriarchal and militant. In their search for spiritual nourishment, more and more people are turning again to nature-to the mountains, the waters, the wilderness places. For this reason the God of nature has made a certain 'come-back'�this time in the form of what may be called 'the ecological God'.

Some of the proponents of 'deep ecology' seem to favour an abandonment both of technology and of the religious values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order to return to the nature religions of the past. But history and technology, having escaped from the Genie's bottle, can scarcely be pushed back into the bottle again. To seek to return to the religious consciousness of tribal peoples is futile. Those who attempt to do so are constructing a religious world which has about it a certain air of make-believe.

As religious believers today we do not have to limit ourselves in this way. We can develop and promote a religious consciousness which combines a vivid sense of the presence of the divine in nature with a conviction that God calls us to play our part in shaping human history. We can nourish our religious sensibility by preserving and recovering ancient nature symbols and rituals; for these carry deep meanings and put us in touch with spiritual energies which we need more than ever today. At the same time we can develop our sense of God's personal involvement in our own lives and hear the call to promote the Reign of God. Over the past generation we have come to see more clearly than before that God's call is an invitation to be on the side of the poor and to engage wholeheartedly in the struggle for justice in the world. But more recently still we have learned that this call is also an invitation to care for the Earth and to help create a lifestyle and culture which respects life and the integrity of creation

For the Jewish people the God of history was one with the God of nature. Their years wandering in the desert were obviously a time when they confronted the extremities of nature and existed at the mercy of God who sent them food from day to day. They looked back on that period as the time when they came to know the living God and were forged into 'the people of God'. Stripped of material comforts and of the social and political supports normally required to make life livable, they came to a clear realization of their dependence on God. They became keenly aware of Yahweh as the one who called them into being as a people and the one who provided a goal for their history.

This discovery of God in the desert was not unique to the Jews. Other peoples also believe that the wilderness is a privileged location for finding God or finding the meaning of one's life. In Christianity-and likewise in the other world religions-there is a long tradition of people retiring into the desert or the mountains as hermits in order to discover God. Such practices can also be found among those who belong to the traditional primal religions. For instance, the Aboriginal people of Australia expect their youths to go on 'walkabout'�a lonely period of survival in a very inhospitable environment. The purpose is not merely to test and toughen them but, above all, to help them find a direction or purpose for their lives.

In the more secularised Western world it is becoming common for those who are searching for a deeper meaning in life to take time out from the world tamed by technology. Leaving modern comforts aside, these 'searchers' often choose to live close to nature where life is stripped down to its essentials.

Those who have already devoted their lives to things of the spirit usually go 'on retreat' for a period each year; and it is no coincidence that we often speak of such retreats as 'a time in the desert'. Sometimes, however, those who live in Northern climates have the romantic idea that the burning desert of the tropics is the best place to find God. They fail to realize that God awaits them equally in their own wilderness places-the hillsides and moorlands of their own cold lands. The Irish hermit St Kevin who retreated to an almost inaccessible cave over the Upper Lake of Glendalough made a choice that was just as valid as that of St Anthony who went into the desert of Egypt.{2}

Pilgrimages were enormously popular in the Middle Ages. They involved long spartan journeys by foot to distant holy places. Modern air travel tends to turn pilgrimages into packaged holidays, thus emptying them of much of their hardship and some of their religious character. But nowadays there are some interesting attempts to recover the original meaning and experience of pilgrimage. One way of doing this is to incorporate into the pilgrimage a journey through a wilderness place where the human body is tested and the spirit becomes more open to God.

It is interesting to compare the experience of the Israelites in the desert with that of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in America. Both groups took the risk of following the call into uncharted territory. In the unknown land the Jews found Yahweh, the true God of justice and reconciliation, the God of the outcasts and the refugees. On the other hand, the adventurers and conquering armies of the European imperial powers found and worshipped a false god. They went to the New World in search of the inexhaustible riches of El Dorado. Gold became their god-a blood-thirsty idol to which they sacrificed the lives of millions of innocent people. This reminds us that when we go beyond the frontier and into the wilderness we must be careful that the god we seek there is the true God. Those who abandon the security of the ordered familiar world are in danger of following an illusory dream of their own. If they yield to the temptation they may find themselves serving an idol which quickly leads them into fanatical and oppressive behaviour.

People living a traditional life in the past were more in touch than we are with the mysteries of life and death; and for them these mysteries were a special occasion for being in touch with the divine power which shaped their lives. The great mystery was the recurrent miracle of life, found in the fertility of the earth and in the mating of the flocks.

In Africa and other tropical regions the fertility of the soil depends entirely on the coming of the rains. No wonder, then, that in Botswana the word 'pula' has a threefold meaning. It means both 'blessing' and 'rain'�the implication being that the primary way in which God blesses the people is by giving them the gift of rain. And since the gift of rain is the source of the blessing of prosperity, when the country gained its independence the government adopted the word 'pula' (rather than, say, the word 'dollar') as the name for the basic unit of the local currency.

Many traditional peoples depend for their livelihood on raising flocks of animals. For them the fertility of the cattle, goats, sheep or camels is the most vivid sign of God's life-giving power at work in their world. In the Old Testament the Jews acknowledged that God was the source of this new life by offering back to God the firstborn males of the flock (Ex 13:2; 22:29).

In every continent, traditional peoples have had similar rites of offering or sacrifice. For instance, in ancient Greece there was a tradition that the king should be sacrificed to ensure the fertility of the soil. At their lowest, sacrifices can be seen as superstitious or magical rites-attempts to manipulate the mysterious powers of the natural order. At best they represent an earnest prayer of gratitude and petition to God. In practice, no doubt, animal sacrifices represent a combination of superstition and genuine prayer in varying degrees.

Human fertility is seen by most traditional peoples as the greatest gift of all and the clearest sign of God's benevolent love. As the psalmist says: 'Children are a gift from God; they are a real blessing.' (Ps 127:3). The story of Abraham and Sarah is a classic instance. The gift of Isaac, coming when all human hope had failed, was the sign that God had chosen Abraham for special love and care; this child sealed the covenant between God and himself. Anybody who has come close to any of the peoples of Africa, Asia or Latin America will be able to tell stories which mirror the experience of Abraham and Sarah.

Even in our largely secularised world the gift of a longed-for child touches a deep religious chord in parents who may never have given much thought to God or the spiritual world. Groping for words to express the mystery of pregnancy and giving birth, women often describe it as a profoundly religious experience. And many fathers who witness the miracle of birth discover within themselves a spiritual depth and religious sensitivity of which they were previously unaware.

In the time of St Francis of Assisi the religious fervour of the Western world had grown cold. To restore its lost sense of the loving care of God, Francis could find no better symbol than the new-born Child of Bethlehem. His symbol of the Child in the Crib has retained its freshness over the past eight hundred years. Even the present-day gross commercialization of Christmas has not destroyed the power of the Child to put us in touch with the gracious love of God embodied in Jesus.

Many Western people live in a world where God scarcely enters their consciousness from one end of the day to the other. The German theologian-poet, Dorothee S�lle remarks that, in such a world, falling in love is the nearest many people get to having a religious experience.

When one falls in love, life becomes suffused with new colour, new life, new energy and new hope. All this is experienced as an unexpected and unmerited gift. Some are content to revel in the gift, aware now that life is far richer and deeper than they had realized. Others experience the Giver in the gift; they sense that what they have been given is a share in a divine love which can permeate and renew this broken world.

God can be found in the experience of sickness. It involves learning to acknowledge that one is no longer powerful and in control but weak and quite helpless; and then discovering the spiritual riches that become available to those who turn to God in their weakness. But this is not an easy lesson to learn; those who find God in their sickness have already travelled a long way on the road of spiritual development. However, a much more common and elementary way in which sickness becomes a way to God is that those who are struck down by illness often beg God to heal them.

Many traditional peoples believe that God gives the gift of healing to certain individuals or categories of people-for instance, to the seventh son of a seventh son, or to those with certain unusual physical characteristics. The crucial feature of these beliefs is the awareness that healing is not merely a science and an art but also a mysterious power given freely by God to some privileged people as an unmerited gift. This gift is for the service of the community; those who receive it are expected not to use it for personal gain. At times the gift proves burdensome, for healers are called on at the most awkward hours. So they find that their lives are not their own. But this too is a reminder that healing is the work of God.

The concept of 'the wounded healer' may form part of the traditional belief-system. In parts of Africa and among the native peoples of North America it is accepted that the healer/diviner may behave in a distinctly odd or even bizarre manner. Similarly, the 'Travelling People' in Ireland often recognize the healing gift in an alcoholic or a person who has some other defect or weakness. So they travel a long distance to bring a sick child to somebody whom we 'settled people' would judge to be quite unsuitable to be a healer. This indicates once again that healing is perceived not as a purely personal skill but as a gracious gift of God.

God said to me, 'Mortal one, prophecy to the breath, and say to the breath, "Thus says the Sovereign God: O breath, come from the four winds, and breathe into these dead bodies that they may live again."' (Ezek 37:9)

This powerful passage from the prophet Ezekiel indicates that the Jews of long ago-like many other traditional peoples-believed that the breath of life comes directly from God. The wind was seen as God's life-breath, God's Spirit; our breath, our spirit, was a share in the life, the breath of God. Therefore, to struggle for breath was to be aware in some degree of God who gives the breath of life-and who withholds it when one's time has come to die. To breathe deeply could then be a religious act, putting one in touch with God the source of life.

Breathing has a deeply religious significance in the Indian religious traditions. For many Buddhists and Hindus, to meditate is to breathe; and to breathe in this meditative manner is to let go of one's petty concerns and to allow oneself to be drawn back into oneness with the divine. The 'Jesus prayer' which has been widely used in Eastern Christianity is also linked to this kind of meditative breathing. In recent years many religious 'searchers' in the West have rediscovered the value of meditative breathing as a way of coming in touch with God.

Desperate people, when they have nowhere else to go, often turn to God. It is easy to dismiss this as an unauthentic kind of religion-to label it as 'escapism' or even as a sign of a neurotic inability to face up to anxiety and fear. But such an easy dismissal of a very widespread human practice may well be another kind of escapism-an unwillingness to acknowledge that many people find themselves in desperate situations from time to time and that, for some, the whole of life is a desperate struggle to survive. It is an illusion to think that everybody should be able to cope with whatever life brings, and that those who do not find life tolerable are somehow a failure or are to blame for their inability to cope. The reality is that deep depression or anxiety makes life almost unbearable for a lot of people, that some people have to carry the burden of constant nagging pain, that the situation of millions of famine victims and refugees is so desperate that most of us refuse to let it in. Worse still is the plight of the thousands who are subjected day after day to a torture which is specifically designed to dehumanize them utterly. In fact, then, for many, desperation is a normal part of the human condition.

In desperation many turn to God. And why not? I am entitled to be scandalized if God allows me to stay in a situation which is destroying my humanity. If I believe in a God who cares for me why should I not cry out in protest or outrage when I feel God has abandoned me? So, those who call out in desperation to God may not yet be praying for rescue; their cry may, first of all, be one of outrage and a kind of disbelief. Nevertheless it is a genuine prayer. For it is a profound mistake to think that I can make contact with

God only when I am filled with gratitude, awe, praise or some other 'good' sentiment. God awaits me equally (or even more) when my situation has become utterly intolerable and the friends who should help have abandoned me. Jesus himself, hanging in torture on the Cross, cried out to God in the words of the psalmist: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mk�15:34; Ps 22:1).

Such a cry of outrage may be the first step in a dialogue of desperation with God. Implicit in this protest is a proclamation of faith in the God who has promised to be faithful. So, as in the psalm prayed by Jesus on the Cross, the outrage may be assuaged by memories of God's help in previous times of desperation: 'Our ancestors put their trust in you; ... they called to you ... and were not disappointed' (Ps 22:4-5). This in turn may lead on to a desperate prayer for help in the present crisis: 'Come quickly to my rescue ... save my life from these dogs' (Ps�22:19-20).

To call out to God in desperation is one thing, but to have a sense of finding God is rather different. Such a sense of God's presence comes mainly in the experience of moving towards freedom of spirit. The shift from desperation towards inner freedom gives the person a sense of the power of God at work. The torture may cease, the famine may end, the depression may lift; and so one has the sense of being rescued by God; the prayer of desperation has been answered. On the other hand, the prayer may not be answered in such a direct way; the causes of desperation may still remain; but the desperate person finds that the prayer has been answered in another way-through the gift of new strength and new determination bringing some freedom of spirit and the power to endure.

One sign of such inner freedom is the ability to take a broader view and to think of the welfare of others. In John's Gospel we have the account of Jesus on the cross committing Mary and the beloved disciple to each other's care (Jn 19:26-7); in Luke's Gospel Jesus is concerned for the women of Jerusalem (Lk 23:28-31); he prays for forgiveness for his torturers (Lk�23:34); and his presence brings an inner freedom to the 'good thief' (Lk 23:40-3).

Humour is another indication of freedom of spirit. During the dark days of South Africa's liberation struggle I was given a vivid account of the torture by the so-called security forces of a well-known Church worker. Day after day the torture went on until he had reached breaking-point. In desperation he cried out to God, saying that he could not endure any more. Next day the torture continued. That night he prayed to God: 'You remember I told you yesterday that I could not go on? Well, my computer screen is locked on to that prayer; nothing else will come up.' A pretty weak joke. But it represented a slight movement from desperation to inner freedom. It distanced him a fraction from being locked into his distress. Next day he was tortured again and found the strength to endure. The torture went on; each day he was desperate; but each day he endured. Eventually the torture came to an end. Looking back, he could see that the ability to smile at his plight (though the smile was thin and grim) was God's answer t his prayer. It was a means used by God to give him back his inner freedom and a sign of that freedom of spirit.

When friends, colleagues, lovers or marriage partners quarrel they often hurt each other so seriously that the wound is almost impossible to heal. Both parties feel that they have been oppressed and victimised. Even when they set out to forgive and forget they often find that they have not really let get of the pain; the sense of grievance is quickly triggered again and the feud grows more bitter than ever.

However, despite the pain and bitterness, it sometimes happens that a genuine reconciliation takes place. It is experienced as a spiritual gift which heals and transforms the heart and the relationship at a very deep level. Quite frequently the reconciled person feels that the initiative has come first of all from God. Forgiveness has come not by an effort of will but as an unexpected grace. It may not even be dependent on the repentance of the other.

No wonder then that reconciliation is a privileged occasion for an experience of God. For the healing which has taken place seems to go beyond what mere humans could achieve. Furthermore, when people have been reconciled after a bitter struggle their relationship is not simply restored to what it was before; it is usually much deeper, marked by a keener appreciation of the love and respect that are being shared and by a sense of tenderness and fragility. The gratuity and creative richness of the gift give those who are involved a sense that this is God's work.

The story of the Prodigal Son as told originally and traditionally has brought home to people the unlimited compassion of God. In our time, however, experiences of such unconditional forgiveness can be seen as pointers to the very existence of God. This is conveyed with remarkable sensitivity in the powerful and poignant conclusion of Sebastian Barry's play, The Steward of Christendom. Knowing that his father will 'put down' the family dog who has killed a sheep, the little boy stays out all night with the dog. He returns at dawn to meet his father:

It was as if I had never seen him before, never looked in his entirety, from head to toe. And I knew then that the dog and me were for slaughter. My feet carried me on to where he stood, immortal you would say in the door. And he put his right hand on the back of my head, and pulled me to him so that my cheek rested against the buckle of his belt. And he raised his own face to the brightening sky and praised someone, in a crushed voice, God maybe, for my safety, and stroked my hair. And the dog's crime was never spoken of, but that he lived till he died. And I would call that the mercy of fathers, when the love that lies in them deeply like the glittering face of a well is betrayed by an emergency, and the child sees at last that he is loved, loved and needed and not to be lived without, and greatly.{3}

Of all the heresies that have distorted Christianity over the centuries perhaps the most damaging of all is what may be called the heresy of privatization. It sprang from a series of dualisms which had crept into Western Christianity over many centuries: a split between the spiritual and the temporal; a split between this life and the next life; and, above all, a split between the public sphere and the private or domestic sphere. When I speak of the heresy of privatization I mean the assumption that the Christian faith is concerned above all with the behaviour of people in their private and domestic lives-and that it has little to do with political and economic affairs.

It never occurred to the Jewish people of old to imagine that obedience to God was mainly a private or domestic affair. It was an utterly taken-for-granted part of their religious mentality to believe that God was concerned in their political and economic liberation. They saw God as directly responsible for their escape from slavery in Egypt and their emergence as a nation with their own land and their own leaders. The whole prophetic tradition in Israel presupposed that God was passionately concerned that they would be a nation characterized by justice and by particular concern for those who are economically poor or socially and politically on the margins of society.

Within the past generation large numbers of Western Christians have begun to recover the sense that God is intimately involved in their struggle for liberation; they have recognized the pervasive debilitating influence of the heresy of privatization and have rejected it decisively. This constitutes the most significant development in Christian spirituality since the time of the Reformation. Furthermore, it has had a spill-over effect on the other world religions, leading to the development of a spirituality of liberation within Islam and in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions.

There are two major strands in this emergent spirituality of liberation. One is the feminist strand: many women-and an increasing number of men-have realized that God is intimately involved in the struggle to resist and overcome the sexism and patriarchy which for thousands of years have left women as second-class citizens. The other strand is the liberation theology which has blossomed in recent years first in Latin America and then in other parts of the so-called Third World and among a minority of Western theologians. These two strands have converged as the economic and political aspects of the gender issue have come to the fore.

What is distinctly new in this spirituality is not simply the sense that God has special care for those who are oppressed, poor, or discriminated against; for that belief was never lost. What had become lost was the sense that God was present in the struggle against oppression. Now it is possible once again for millions of people-especially women and those who are poor-to find God in their outrage and anger about the way they are treated. Once again the 'angry' psalms are owned and prayed with authenticity, instead of being given a figurative 'spiritual' meaning or explained away as relics of the past. People sense that God shares their anger about injustice and that God is on their side as they challenge and resist it. They feel the inspiration of the Spirit at work in their efforts to organize themselves to struggle against oppressive forces. And, when they celebrate a victory in the struggle, gratitude and praise of God wells up spontaneously in their hearts as they did in the hearts of Moses and God's people long ago:

I will sing to Yahweh, whose triumph is glorious;

Horse and rider have been thrown into the sea.

Yahweh is my strength and my song;

Yahweh is my salvation. (Ex 15:1-2)

The most convincing experience which many people have of the presence and power of God is when they find in their lives a mysterious providence which draws good out of evil. For Christians, the primary instance of healing and hope coming in this way out of injustice and evil is the power of God at work in raising Jesus to new life after he had been unjustly condemned, cruelly tortured and put to death (Acts 13:27-30; Eph 1:19-20). John's Gospel invites us to see Jesus as the grain of wheat thrown into the ground which had to die in order to bear fruit (Jn 12:24). Indeed the vindication of Jesus by God is so striking and powerful that believers speak of 'the power of the Cross' and see it as the very heart of the Christian faith.

Many Christians assume that this instance of God's presence and power is so unique that it stands alone in a category of its own. In fact, however, the resurrection of Jesus as the other side of his

Cross is not an isolated instance of the power of God to draw good out of evil. Rather it throws a new light on our everyday living. It encourages us to find in our daily lives, and in our history, similar instances of a creative and reconciling transcendent power drawing new and deeper life out of failure, suffering and evil. I shall return to this point at much greater length in Chapter 5, where I shall be looking at what it means to say that we are redeemed by Jesus.

It is not just Christians who have such an experience of the presence and power of God in overcoming evil. All who are spiritually awakened, whether they be Christian or non-Christian, can at times find some mysterious and benevolent power at work in the midst of the worst evils that are inflicted on them-a superhuman power which draws a much greater good out of even the most terrible evil. Indeed, such happenings are often a more effective 'proof' of the existence of God than any purely rational argument. Not only do they put us in touch with God but they teach us the real meaning of the word 'God'.

In this chapter I have outlined many different situations of disclosure-circumstances in which God may become evident in people's lives. A primary task of those who feel called to share in the life and work of Jesus is to help people be more aware of, and in touch with, what is going on in such situations. In this way they can, like Jesus, become open to God's presence and free to respond to the grace of the moment.

Individual Christians are not alone in carrying out this task. They have the encouragement of knowing that it is a key part of the mission of the Christian community as a whole; and they have the practical support of other committed Christian believers. More importantly, God is also actively involved in this process of disclosure and revelation. For God is present to our world in different ways. In addition to being the transcendent God-the God from 'beyond'�who becomes present to people in the variety of ways noted in this chapter, God is also the immanent Spirit who touches people's lives from within, who inspires them with hope, energy and life, who unveils to them the life-giving truth and calls them to share this truth and life with others. The work of this divine Spirit is the subject of the next two chapters. Furthermore, God is also the incarnate One, God made visible in the life and death of Jesus. Chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with different aspects of this special presence of God in our world.