Dear Nicola,

Your question: "Dare we believe in a kind God, who grants us the time we need to finish what we must?  My reply: a) Please note that a reply is a reply and does not purport to give an answer.  Subsidiary questions; b) who what and where is the "good God".  c) how and by whom is "the time we need to finish what we must" determined?

I rely on Spinoza for the identification of God with Nature. Deus sive Natura.  God is Nature and Nature is God. The identity of God and Nature assures the "goodness" of God and the divinity of nature.

It has been my contention for some years (cf. the disquisitions of Maximilian Katenus in my novel "Vier Freunde" that the identity of self is an illusion, that with the course of time, each one of us is subject to unpredicable change, that human knowledge is the assimilation BY the human mind of the world which it purports to know, and that human action is the assimilation TO the human mind of the world which purports to specify its conduct. I am recurrently impressed with the wisdom and truth of Aesops fable about the fox and the sour grapes.

My answer to your question: "Dare we believe in a kind God, who grants us the time we need to finish what we must?" is that the mercy of nature is obvious, since the time we need to finish what we must, is always available, because that time is unavoidably determined by the time that is granted to us. Q.e.d.

EJM