Book Review: A God Who Acts

Harry Blamires was a friend of C. S. Lewis. This book, A God Who Acts: Recognizing the Hand of God in Suffering and Failure, was a companion in my devotional reading time just prior to my son's death. A passage from the front of the book sums up much of what I ruminated on when Trevor passed away without attaining the ministry we begged God to give him. "What have we the right to expect when we invoke God's blessings upon our schemes and ventures, when we pray for his help and guidance in our personal affairs? Is the hand of God to be discerned in our failures as well as in our successes?" What do we do with all those intense prayers we prayed but never realized? God's will was done. I have no doubt.

Man is not the initiator, "conceiving a desirable course of action, bringing it to God's notice as one might send a letter to an M.P., and then waiting for a favourable reponse--hoping, as we say, that the idea will be adopted.... He is an initiating God. His incarnate encounter with humanity is a dramatic action whose plot was conceived in heaven, not a piece of cosmic legislation pushed through the high courts in response to human petition."

Our Christian vocation is to serve God. To work with Him as He acts in our world. Some are called to suffer more than others, but God is in every detail. We can trust Him to get it right. Just like in the life of Joseph, as outlined by Alistair Begg, God is in our successes and our failures.