Pleasing God?

What does it mean to live a life pleasing to God?
Indeed, can God be "pleased"?
Isn't this sort of language the epitome of projecting human characteristics upon the Divine?

Every now and then, the opening prayer (called the "Collect of the Day) assigned for a given Sunday in the Episcopal Church provokes me toward such questions. The prayer for tomorrow says, in part, "...and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed..."

I wonder how many of us consider ourselves so "weak" that we can do NOTHING good?

Theologically, I believe that God's Spirit supports and sustains us in the lives we live. I believe in God we "live and move and have our being". I believe that to become aware of our dependence upon God's presence in our lives (every moment of our lives!) is to begin to get an inkling of the ethereal nature of "grace". Perhaps we're in need of being reminded from time to time of our dependence upon God.

Perhaps this language of dependence is necessary to remind us that God is God and we are not. I wonder how such language impacts any understanding of human agency. Or maybe such language is simply pious-speak that floats over us in a few seconds during the liturgy. Tomorrow's prayer raises plenty of questions for me and maybe that's the point.

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