The Long Reach

When Moses fretted to the Eternal God, wondering how Moses could feed the wandering people, the Eternal replied it would be done by divine power: Is the Eternal One’s hand too short? (Numbers 11.23). Some  translate: Is there a limit to the Eternal’s power? One renders it colloquially: Is this beyond the Lord’s reach? 

Feeling as though we are beyond God’s reach is easy these days. We are out of reach of nearly everyone. Prudently foregoing access to the usual ritual behaviour that assures us God and humans are near stretches us to find other ways to recall and to feel God’s eternal closeness. Churches are trying to remind us the “outstretched hand” of God is not too short to hold all humans. The metaphor belongs to one “at the global epicenter of the crisis,” Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco of Genoa. Mr. John L. Allen Jr. related Cardinal Bagnasco’s pastoral care and “optimism.”

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Wikimage Panathenaic Genova panorama… by "Bbruno / CC BY-SA 4.0"