God eternal behind the change

Bishop George Berkeley, in his 'The Principles of Human Knowledge', published in 1710, said:

Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his mind to perceive them…all the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that there being is to be perceived and known…they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in the mind of some eternal Spirit.

One thing that I know as a certainty is that 'God is all there is'. Every thing that we sense with this body (and when the body is no more) is created from the mind of God, as is everything that we think of as ourselves. We are given the imagination to create or destroy our world of change but, as Jesus said, we would be better to build treasure in heaven (e.g. never loose sight of the eternal).

Among even the most secular environmentalists I meet and work with it is recognised that it is a certainty that we will destroy the basis for our human existence within a short time span, if we continue with our present lifestyle. Prophets have foreseen this because, if they glimpse the mind of the eternal they can see what we call the future (because God creates the illusion of time).

If we concentrate on the eternal we have nothing to fear, regardless of the changes around us. If God has decreed a new heaven and a new world, let us give thanks for the good that is in this one and accept the new with gratitude and joy.

Paul Newman

September, 2001

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