Kathleen
Norris tells of a moment in time when she glimpsed something of the
light. This is what she wrote: One
morning this past spring I noticed a young couple with an infant at
an airport departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other
people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it
was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy
or worried-looking, he would respond with absolute delight. It was
beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of
heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would
allow it, I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into
our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and
called good, along with the rest of the creation. As Psalm 139 puts
it, darkness is as nothing to God who can look right through whatever
evil we've done in our lives to the creature made in the divine
image.
Grace
is the precious gift that encourages us to not give up hope for a
world where evil deeds seem only to increase because grace overcomes
deeds and can even change what we do by helping us to see who we
really are, a child of God. Grace is more than just something that
can fix something that is broken, it is the revelation that the
broken thing is valuable itself as something that was made and can be
broken but not lost. It is a reminder of our true self, our created
self, the self made by God for love. Grace is not just an
afterthought to heal the wounds of the moment; it is the place where
we are from and the place where we are going. It is the place where
we were whole and beautiful, where we find ourselves broken yet still
beautiful in the eyes of God, and where we are healed, restored,
recreated, made whole again, made new. In other words, grace is not
just one category of experience; it is the context of all experience,
of all creation, of life itself. By grace we can see God in each
other.
And
when we see God in each other it changes how we treat each other. It
is easy to hurt an enemy who hates us but it is not so easy to hurt
the beautiful child that God has made. When we experience grace, it
is very personal. It can be described in a general way as a sense of
well-being, of being loved without conditions, to intrinsically
lovable by definition, though the details of how we experience these
things may differ. One thing every experience of grace has in common
however is the overwhelming desire to be gracious. It is as if one
could no more stop the movement of grace than the movement of time
itself. Once touched by God's grace we are compelled to touch
others with God's grace. To hold back would be life trying to hold
our breath.
If
there is anything we aspire to be in this place it is a place where
grace happens, where grace is present, where we see ourselves and
each other as blessed by the grace of God in a world where there is
hope because there is grace. It has been written that where sin
abounds grace abounds even more. We need not be afraid but boldly and
gently share the grace of God with the world as we meet it and so by
the grace of God shall the world be transformed. Thanks be to God who
delights in us. May we delight in God.
Blessings
of grace, Larry.
