A quick blurb on the "Openness" of God

In my Christian History and Theology Class, we are wrestling with the Theologies of a classic (Augustinian/Calvinist) view of God's sovereignty and an "Open" view that gives room for free will.
I am going to have to say that I am leaning towards the "openness" perspective at this point. My reasons for this are many, but I am going to share my most personal reasons.
My father was diagnosed in March of 1999 with stage 4b esophageal cancer. Over the course of the following year my father slowly and painfully wasted away and died in March of 2000. In July of 1999 my then fiancee's father was diagnosed with cancer who also slowly and painfully wasted away and died in August of 2000. I cannot believe that a good God wanted two of his faithful servants to suffer in that extreme and cause that degree of pain and horror to rule the lives of their families. Such a God would be evil. If Augustine and Calvin were correct, then I am happy that Jesus suffered and died so that God could at least get a taste of the pain He so freely deals out.

The question to me is an essential character of God issue, and to say that "If God does it, it is good." merely sidesteps the issue of the morality revealed to us. While goodness can seem relative at times, there is a progression and direction towards wholeness and well being of all that is the common element. This evasion is not a valid argument if God's actions go against the direction that we see goodness is working towards.

Small Things and Vision

“It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.” Mother Theresa

God has been using the readings for my Missional Leadership class to challenge an assumption I had made about myself. The assumption was that I was not a visionary because I didn’t have huge lofty goals that I aspired to, but was focused on building relationships. What I didn’t realize because of my assumption, was that my vision is for better relationships, and isn’t program focused.

The underlying assumption is one that’s about the nature of vision and what vision can and cannot encompass. I see that my assumption was that vision had to be about large scale actions, and not about the little things. I think that I have primarily heard about vision in the macro context, and had never put it together mentally that vision could be about something on an interpersonal level rather than an organizational level.

Micro-visions, sometimes I wonder at God’s patience with me. It has taken me this long to grasp that meaning from the parable of the mustard seed. As I sit in the light of the Spirit, I am being challenged to let go of my assumption that visions can only be large scale.

The Spirit has used Friedman’s book "A Failure of Nerve" to challenge that assumption, and even in some ways has shown me that the vision to improve interpersonal relationships will foster others’ visions and even prove to have larger effects than is readily apparent.

My worldview has been shifted a bit, and I need a lot more processing to figure out all of the ramifications, but one thing I know is that I must now process this vision, and figure out how to articulate it.