To say that God waits upon creatures is not to suggest that God is doing nothing or simply allowing things to run their course. Again, the best model we have of divine action is the Christ-event, culminating in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. God was not passive in the rejection, humiliation, and crucifixion of Jesus. God was with Jesus in his suffering, holding him in love, and acting powerfully in the Spirit, transforming his failure and death into the source of healing and liberation for the world, and raising Jesus up as the beginning of life for the whole creation. God’s way is not the way of an intervention that would overturn the laws of nature or human freedom to save Jesus from what looked like the total failure of his mission and from a brutal death. God’s way is revealed as that of accompaniment in love, transformation in the Spirit, and resurrection life. It appears from the Christ-event that God’s way is that of being committed to allowing events to unfold, even when they are radically opposed to the divine will, and to bring healing and liberation in and through them.
Denis Edwards, How God Acts: Creation, Redemption, and Special Divine Action. Theology and the Sciences (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), pp. 50–51
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