A regular series with Jurgen Moltmann.  Today’s quote is taken from his book, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, page 64.

God experiences history in order to effect history.  He goes out of himself in order to gather into himself.  He is vulnerable, takes suffering and death on himself in order to heal, to liberate and to confer new life.  The history of God’s suffering in the passion of the Son and the sighings of the Spirit serves the history of God’s joy in the Spirit and his completed felicity at the end.  That is the ultimate goal of God’s history of suffering in the world.  but once the joy of union is complete the history of suffering does not become obsolete and a thing of the past.  As suffering that has been endured, and which has brought about liberation, eternal life and union, it remains the ground of eternal joy in the salvation of God and his new creation.

     Praise God!  He sent his son to redeem the world from within.