Thursday, August 23, 2012

God is as an eternal fountain that gushes forth abundantly nothing but what is good...


We are to trust in God alone and look to Him and expect from Him nothing but good, as from one who gives us body, life, food, drink, nourishment, health, protection, peace, and all necessaries of both temporal and eternal things.  He also preserves us from misfortune.  And if any evil befall us, He deilvers and rescues us.  So it is God alone (as had been said well enough) from whom we receive all good and by whom we are delivered from all evil. ...It is as though He were an eternal fountain that gushes forth abundantly nothing but what is good.  And from that fountain flows forth all that is and is called good.

Even though we experience much good from other people, whatever we receive by God's command or arrangement is all received from God.  For our parents and all rulers and everyone else, with respect to his neighbor, have received from God the command that they should du us all kinds of good.  So we receive these blessings not from them, but through them, from God.  For creatures are only the hands, channels, and means by which God gives all things.  So He gives to the mother breasts and milk to offer to her child, and He gives corn and all kinds of produce from the earth for nourishment.  None of these blessings could be produce by any creature of itself.
~BOC, LC, I, 24-26

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