I've been reading this thread and some other recent ones, but haven't wanted to get stuck in, because I don't know if what I have to say makes any sense, and also because I am really busy at the moment and can only dip in and out, so please do forgive me if I post and run. It's not that I am not prepared to stick around and defend myself but only that I have stuff to do which I am too good at ignoring.
Anyway, my twopenn'orth, from a Christian pov.
I think that part of the problem when we try to think about these things is that it's so difficult (if not impossible) to get our heads around the idea of eternity that we fall into two traps.
Firstly we think of God as if he (or she, or it) were some kind of human being like us. A superhuman being maybe, but still someone who acts like us and thinks like us and makes choices like us. In so doing, I think we inevitably limit what God is. I sense (though I could be wrong) that this is what the OP is getting at when she talks about the 'light of God' - that she's trying to think beyond the idea of God as a paternalistic 'Heavenly Father', who loves us, but also makes choices for us, punishes us, or whatever.
And secondly we think about God's time as if it were the kind of 'and then..., and then...' narrative that we inevitably have to live by in our human lives. But if God is eternal, if God is in eternity, then there can be no 'and then..., and then...' but only a great big gigantic 'now'.
So, I believe that God created a universe which was free, as NKU says, and that this gift of freedom was both an enormous gift and an enormous challenge for the created world. God could have created a world without freedom and that world could, then, have been a world in which all created beings loved God unquestioningly and in which therefore they never screwed up, never sinned, never put themselves before God and their neighbours, etc. On one level this would have been a perfect world (and in the Genesis narrative it's symbolised by Eden), but it would have been a world in which created beings were no more than God's puppets, where they loved him not because they chose to do so freely, but because they were compelled to do so. And that would, ultimately, have been less generous than to give creation its freedom.
And because God is outside of time all the things which appear to us to be both subsequent and consequent ('because I did xxx, yyy happened'), simply are in the mind (or light, to use the OP's metaphor) of God. And if this is the case, then it doesn't make sense to suggest that God somehow 'changes his mind' about something because of my prayers, because 'before the prayer', 'the prayer', and 'after the prayer' are all 'now' to God. And, anyway, to change one's mind is such a human trait... another example of us assuming that God is like one of us.
So, I believe that God knows the choices that we make (have made/will make), but that he does not make us make them, but rather allows us to make them. So, fundamentally I believe that God is good, since creation, and our freedom within creation, is an act of generosity, from which everything else (including those things which in and of themselves are clearly not good) follows. Which means I guess that I agree with you (God is in everything) and also with your vicar (God is good) because I believe that God's goodness is at a deeper level than the transient goodness and evil of our day-to-day lives.
Except that now I've written all this and am thinking that it probably sounds like so much nonsense... I'm going to hit 'post' anyway, because I've spent some time writing it. But with the proviso that it may not make any sense at all.
Oh and just as a PS, OP, my DD was confirmed earlier this year and in her group there were, I think, six children and four adults, so it's not at all unusual to be confirmed as an adult.