This is my Father's cosmos

From Writers to Read. In the final chapter Douglas Wilson discusses the work of his son, N D Wilson. 

In Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl the fatherhood of God lies behind everything. This apparent chaotic world is not chaotic at all; if we step back and take it all in with the right perspective, we see that it is an intricately designed carnival ride. There is a fatherly purpose in it: it turns out that we thought we were being born into a world full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but what was happening is that our Father was taking us to a particularly spectacular fair with some really gnarly rides.

In Death by Living Nate spends a great deal of time honouring his two grandfathers, in turn, my wife's father, Larry Greensides, now with the Lord, and my own father, Jim Wilson. And, as Paul mentions in Ephesians (3: 14-15), behind all such admirable fathers is the Father. All fatherhood derives its name from the Father of all things. The heart of wisdom is to learn to see the Father in earthly fathers and not be distracted by their sins and failings. The Father is much more like they are than they are themselves (Heb. 12:11). The window might be dirty because of sin, but we all still need to see through it.

Behind and through all of this is a robust understanding of fatherhood at the source of everything. If we lived in a fatherless cosmos, then little outbreaks of fatherhood here and there would simply be small insanities. In a random universe, everything is random. Fatherhood here and/or there would be just another random event. Fatherhood would be just as random as fatherlessness. But if we live in a world where the Father is behind and beneath everything, then every true adventure has to consist of finding our way back to the place, overcoming the obstacles that came about as a result of estrangement from the Father. Those obstacles are placed by sin and rebellion, and so finding the Father is the archetypal adventure. This is the central reason why Nate's books work as effectively as they do.

Proving prayer

The question then arises, “What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?” The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers. The answer surely is that a compulsive empirical proof such as we have in the sciences can never be attained.

Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experienced. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is a request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

C S Lewis, in The World's Last Night