His coming presence

God with us—it seems a brilliant, blazing thing.  An aggressive, possessive fury of incoming glory already upon us, yet not fully arrived.  How can such a thing be possible?  How can the Lord of all the universe dwell with such fallen, poor sinners?  The answer to that question can be spoken in a sentence, yet fills lifetimes in the revealing of its mysteries and wonders.  This answer alone fills and satiates the soul of a man, capturing his heart amid the best of times, and sustaining it in the worst.  This answers the deepest questions of this cosmos, and the questions of the smallest child.  This confounds the wise and is made known to the simple.  What wondrous love is this!

“To the glorious message of salvation, there is an answering faith on the part of man, a faith consisting in childlike trust in the grace of God, and becoming at the same time a fountain of love to God and of devotion to His service.  This faith is not the natural expression of any so-called inborn religious disposition of man, but is the fruit of the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit.” –Louis Berkhof