God knows everything, at all times. The Bible sometimes speaks of God as having changed His mind or being disappointed. God is supposed to have tested Abraham’s obedience in the matter of Isaac. God is supposed to have had His plans upset by the misconduct of Adam and Eve, by the general wickedness of humanity before the flood, and, in fact, He is frequently represented as being disappointed and even frustrated by the conduct of mankind. In orthodox theology, the devil was continually upsetting God’s arrangements and bringing his plans to naught. Indeed, to listen to some preachers, one would have supposed that the devil was a good deal more powerful than God.
Of course, all this is nonsense. Such things could not be really true of God. It was Abraham’s idea of God that led him to prepare to kill Isaac. It was the wickedness of mankind in the antediluvian world that brought on the flood as a natural consequence, just as the fears, hatreds, jealousies, and greed of mankind over many years have brought on war.
We make an idolatrous image of ourselves and call it God. Let us destroy this image today and worship the true God who is infinite and unchanging Good.
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent … (Number 23:19).
The examples from the Bible cited above are among the most difficult to understand. We can not know what moved the writer of the Abraham story, what actually caused the great flood or whether God knew before hand that Adam and Eve would choose free will over obedience. What we do know is that we are physical beings, existing in a physical world, that is interpreted by us in terms of our limitations such as sight, sound, smell and touch. We know that we are also spiritual beings living in a non-physical existence that reveals itself to us through thought, intuition and understanding of God.
God exists in both planes and reveals spiritual insight through teaching, experience and revelation. That which God reveals to us, must makes sense to us in light of our limitations and physical nature. So, when the Bible speaks to a subject, even to God’s intent, reactions and actions, it is within the framework of human limitations in understanding and perception. That which we can not perceive, sense or understand, must be explained or revealed in terms that we can grasp even with our limitations. When God speaks to us, it is as an adult who speaks to a child. As any good parent would do, God explains things to us that we are not capable of understanding through our own means. A parent does not tell their toddler child about the physics of combustion, they simply say “don’t play with matches or you will get hurt”.
One thing of which we can be sure is that God will reveal all things to us as we are capable of understanding them. And that, if we study the Bible, commit to God and live according to God’s will, then “the scales will drop from our eyes and the mud will fall from our ears”, so we can understand all we need to know for our best good. One last thing, there are likely some things that we are incapable of understanding or do not need to know. Just as any good parent would do, God would withhold these insights from us until we are ready to understand them and not abuse them. Until then, we should trust God, lean on our faith and pursue the multitudes of right things of which we have no doubt. This is the sure path to enlightenment, joy and harmony with the Creator, whatever God’s intentions are.
Leaning on God,
Stan
Good Morning Garden 
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