Interesting exegesis of El Shaddai... and a valiant attempt to address Dan's good questions. I've been where he is, and now I'm there again, caring for a beloved with cancer. In my new book Choose the Narrow Path, I spend a lot of time on this issue. In a nutshell, God in creating a universe that is not a part of Godself inherently limits divine acting in the world. Creation has its own way of being, even though ultimately depending on God for that being.

So after a while in the desert where Jesus went to prepare himself for ministry after his baptism, he was famished from fasting. Satan ("the accuser") tempts him: "If you are the Son of God" (the reason he went into the desert was to come to terms with himself)—"IF you are the Son of God, you should be able to turn these here stones into bread." Jesus refuses, because God does not change the laws of the creation on a whim: stones don't ever become bread, and the point of me being here is we live because of the (creating) Word of God, not just because our hunger gets satisfied. (Matthew & Luke 4: 1-4)