The opening prayer for today asks God to reach out to us with loving power. When we pause to think, we realize that, though we might speak of the power of love, "loving power" seems to be something of a contradiction.

We do not associate power, or at least the exercise of power, with the characteristic of "loving". The Christian insight that God's power is a loving power is a correct one. The Old Testament often speaks of the power and the wisdom of God, and through the revelation of the New Testament we have come to accept that God's wisdom is God the Son, the Word, while God's power is the Holy Spirit and so God's power is essentially love, the fullness of the power of love.

The Old Testament called God "The Strong One of Israel" and unfortunately understood that title in a very militaristic sense. Isaiah used the term "The Strong One of Israel" but understood it is a very different sense, showing that God would save us, not by strength and power but in the weakness of suffering - a weakness that Paul would associate with the wisdom of God.