GOD IS ALMIGHTY
God our Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, is Almighty. "The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." Here also are two words and two thoughts, not one alone. God is Almighty in the sense that His power is supreme and irresistible. This is wholly true but it is not the thought that stands in the forefront either in Holy Scripture or in the creed. It is there in the background, where sheer force must be and ought to be.
The prominent thought, however, when we profess our faith in God the Father Almighty is the thought of His wise, holy sovereignty. He is the Ruler of all, the Master of all, of Himself and of all persons and things. Not by might but by persuasion He is content to exercise His Dominion over men. So God governs the world and in His government we find the model for the true government of men. Force has its use only where freedom has failed. It is not God's power but His patience that excites our wonder and at times our perplexity. We are puzzled because He does not intervene more directly with His outstretched arm, but waits on man's agency and allows such latitude to man's self-will and blindness and cruelty. It is the price of our freedom. This we know and more we do not know as yet. But we can trust our Father for what Jesus Christ was God is.
We know therefore in the story of the Cross and of the Resurrection that while sorrow and suffering and disaster are not removed from human life, God does not stand apart from them and unconcerned. All who pass along the way of sorrows and into the valley of death may find in Christ, that is in God Himself, the sympathy of One Who has passed that way before, and the strength of One who has conquered death and all its powers.
GOD IS EVERYWHERE PRESENT AND KNOWS ALL THINGS.
The attributes of God pass inevitably and naturally one into another. It cannot be otherwise because they are all ways in which the Living Eternal Being reveals Himself. In thinking of His Holiness and of His power we are led to think of His presence and in thinking of His presence we are led to think of His knowledge.
"The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good." It will not be possible to speak here in any fulness of the knowledge of God. Two facts, however, should always be kept in mind. Nothing can be hid from Him Whose eyes are in every place. Nothing is obscure to Him Who is everywhere. Yet it is not God's knowledge of them that causes men to be what they are or to act as they do. There is a big problem here. In theory it is too big for solution, but in practice the problem is not so great. God's knowledge does not compel us more than does His will. Within the limits that we are well aware of, that come to us from inheritance and from environment, we are free and because we are free we are responsible.
A second consideration is this. The Holy One Who is ever present, Who makes His moral claim upon us and expects the best of us, is no other than our Father. He knows us through and through. Yet as a Father he has compassion on His children. He knoweth whereof we are made; He remembereth that we are but dust. The presence of God may best be studied in close connection with His Personality. It is as a person that He is present. The 139th Psalm will help us best to realize how universal His Presence is. We can then follow out the teaching given there and elsewhere in Holy Scripture, in the witness of the Church, and in the experience of men. He Who is everywhere present, just because He is our Father, can be present with us by His own appointment in special ways and places and for special purposes. He is present in nature in its vastness and in its minuteness, and in both we can read His thoughts after Him. He is present in the affairs of men and of nations in all ages. He speaks to men in the voice of conscience and we hear Him in its strange authority to command and to forbid. In Christ He is present revealing Himself in human experiences and in human deeds and words and service. Where two or three are gathered together in Christ's name He is in their midst. In the Sacraments He is present to give His sacred gifts.
GOD IS OUR FATHER.
We have considered now some of the great truths of God which have been revealed to us, but the Fatherhood of God in itself, what is it that we know of this?