As the mid-west experiences record flooding, I recall the
time four years ago when my own house was flooded. A culvert became blocked,
sending the local creek down my road and through my home. While my children
waited safely upstairs, the downstairs swam with a foot of brown water. Within
three hours, the water receded leaving our possessions churned in muddy
disarray.

     Thankfully, we had a host of friends and well-wishers
descend on our home over the weeks that followed. The walls were cut at two
feet, sprayed with bleach and dried with fans. Mounds of sodden carpets, toys,
books, and keepsakes were hauled, first outside, and then to the local dump. I
remain very grateful for their help and company during that tumultuous time.

     Several times over the course of the clean-up, people
offered me their sympathies. Often they expressed themselves in simple terms of
regret, but occasionally they offered me what they thought passed for a kind of
spiritual comfort.

            “All
things work for good in God’s will. This will turn out for the best.”

            “God
allowed the flood to happen. Eventually, you’ll see His greater plan.”

While I appreciate the sympathetic impulse that motivated
these theological consolations, I was deeply unsatisfied with the picture of
God’s will they presented. Either God was a cruel schoolmaster imparting a
difficult lesson. Or God was a negligent parent who turned aside at the very
moment that we could have most used God’s help and agency. It occurred to me
that these statements hung on a very particular interpretation of the term
“will” as it applies to God.

     Traditionally, God’s will is taken to mean God’s intention
or God’s design. That is, we define “will” in legislative terms: God
demonstrates God’s authority by decreeing the fulfillment of X, Y, and Z. In
this case, when events impact us negatively, when “bad” things happen, we are
left trying to reconcile our insistence on God’s omnipotence with our belief in
God’s goodness. However, this tension might be decreased by reshaping our
notion of “will.”

     Heading into Easter, I think of Jesus’ prayer the night he
was arrested. Luke records Jesus’ words this way: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.” (22:42, NJB) What is notable in the text is that the
first “will”
in “if you are willing” is most in keeping with our
traditional interpretation of God’s will. It connotes purpose and intention.
However, the second “will” in “let your will be done” is different. The word
here
suggests desire or pleasure, particularly God’s purpose to bless
humanity through Christ. While we tend to read this phrase as a solemn
acceptance of the crucifixion (i.e. legislatively), it is more accurately an
expression of Jesus’ determination to see God’s character demonstrated through
his own thoughts and actions.  It
is a notion of will that places an emphasis on God’s incarnate presence rather
than God’s legislative power.

     The night my home flooded there was little I could do as
parent to intervene on my children’s behalf. I couldn’t hold back the water. I
couldn’t stop the storm. But I could sit with them in the candlelight,
listening to their fears, reassuring them of my love. While it is not my
intention to suggest that God is a parent similarly powerless, I think it might
be healthy to reevaluate our idea of God’s will to emphasize God’s abiding,
loving presence over God’s legislative power. In this way, God’s sovereignty is
more a function of God’s omnipresence than God’s omnipotence.

     This shift also asks us to look at the cross in a slightly
different manner. If Jesus was appealing to God’s abiding presence in the
garden, then God’s abandonment of Jesus on the cross is that much more
poignant. Perhaps this, as much as anything, was the substitutionary sacrifice
that Jesus accomplished: he endured the absence of God so that we might never
endure a moment without God’s presence.