The odds are that practically all readers of this blog have had experience of A and E. Burns, breakages and blisters get taken to A and E and patients hope there is not a long wait. A and E is part of a civilised society. You couldn’t imagine a society without them – just as you couldn’t imagine a society without traffic lights or taps without a fresh water supply.
But there is another A and E. It is found in the prayer book and it is the mode of address in some of our prayers. We start praying with ‘Almighty and Everlasting’ God. Beginnings and endings are always important and in the case of faith they are more important than usual. They are an antidote to the throwaway question ‘Do you believe in God?’ It is impossible to give a useful answer to this question. It is like asking ‘Do you believe in blue?’ or ‘Do you believe in gravity?’ We are in an area where better questions are necessary if we are to make progress.
To put it another way, serious religious faith starts with the character of God. We can’t deal with the question of belief in God until we know what we understand by the word. A and E give us a clue. ‘Almighty’ signifies power to do things. When we use the word of God we means that he is capable of doing anything he chooses to do. Nonsense like ‘’Does two plus two equal five?’ does not come into it. Indeed, our personal opinion hardly counts. God is transcendent as they say – beyond our reach or understanding.
And what is true of the word ‘Almighty’ is also true of the word ‘Everlasting’. God is not puny, easily out-flanked, forgetful. He does not need to be told what to do by us, his creatures, though he is pleased to hear our supplications. Some schemes, elaborate and exhaustive to the last degree, give the impression that all depends on human enterprise. God is hardly necessary.
But to think of God as A and E alters the case. A God of that kind has us all depending on him.
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