Sonia

Famously there are many curved platforms on the London Underground where the straight carriages do not align with the platform edge creating gaps. Formerly a male voice boomed the announcement; in recent years a female voice - for undisclosed but presumably deeply psychological reasons - repeats the mantra instead. Somehow the announcement has the quality of being irritating even when you wait for but one train on one platform. What it is like to be a staff member hearing her all day can best be imagined by the voice's nickname, Sonia. Sonia is allegedly short for "Get's on yer nerves"!

One of the most irritating allegations made against God is that He is (more strictly was) a god of the gaps. By this weary reasoning, 'God' is simply the explanation of all that human beings cannot explain and as the gap shrinks God also shrinks. Now the gap aka God has shrunk out of existence except in tiny minds. Atheistic Peter Atkins, a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, in a classic example of the maxim that statements by scientists are not necessarily science wrote;

'There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence'.

Whilst this statement is laughable, Christians must beware that we do not turn our faith into one believing only in the irritating Sonia, goddess of the gaps. Ponder one of the most famous Bible texts;

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

It derives from the very ancient patriarchal story of Job. When we read the catastrophic series of events that preceded it we find an extraordinary mixture of inexplicable phenomena (gaps) and tribal raiding parties (observable explanation). Yet - and this is the not-to-be-missed point - all these gaps (that ancients couldn't explain) and non-gaps (things anyone could explain) are alike interpreted by the ancient patriarch as the works of God. The easily-explained Chaldeans and the difficult-to-understand fire from heaven is all, in some way, God at work.

Echoing from the mists of early humanity this story shows that it has never been true belief to see God only in the gap; He is on the platform and the train as well.