God really does have his fingerprints all over everything doesn’t he? And when he speaks to us, like Margarget Feinberg talks about in Sacred Echoes, it isn’t just a one time writing in the sky revelation. He has an amazing way of speaking in many ways all around us, affirming the same thing, so that we can’t help but notice.He’s been doing this in my life lately. Pressing in on a deep-seated gracelessness woven deep within me. I didn’t realize how much I am unable to extend grace to myself and how profoundly this affects my ability to then extend that grace to those around me. For whatever reason, a deathly fear of failure has woven through my life for a long time. But His fingers have gently been pushing the soil away to reveal roots, pulling them out one by one, and replanting them in his streams of living water.
The other day I started reading Free of Charge: Giving and Receiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf (how can this not be a cool book with a name like that!?). In it, he quotes from a story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery titled Little Prince. I’m not going to try to explain the story—you need to read the book if you want to hear more—but at one point Volf summarizes and quotes from The Prince: “His mysterious affair with the rose began when he responded to the rose’s simple request, ‘Would you be so kind as to tend to me?’ The gift of care made it his rose, the only one in the whole world. ‘It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important,’ the wise fox told him.” (Volf 16)
For some reason this has stuck with me as just one of the many ways God has been drawing me into encounters with him, encounters with his radical grace. This idea that we must be able to give, not sell, to the people around us. To care for them without requiring things in return. This idea that when we are able to do this, we find that person becomes very dear to us.
Gracelessness, I have been realizing, leads to the opposite: when all our relational transactions are “buying and selling” as Volf describes it (14), we actually tear those relationships down and are left with bitterness where there once was love.
This blog is already getting long, so I’ll spare you, but there’s a glimpse into what God has his hands on in my life right now…
2 comments:
you are gracious. you are a GREAT listener and very good at being genuinly interested in what people have to share. : )
I read something this morning that I thought also was applicable to this post. From "Simple Spirituality" by Chris Heurtz (director of WMF) he was talking about some of his paradigm shifts after growing up evangelical and finding Jesus in His love for the marginalized. He wrote "As I learned to love God, my love was not motivated by fear, or the threat of hell (or even the promise of paradise) but rather the character of the One who is by nature lovable. Christ was irresistable. I couldnt help but love Jesus the more I discovered who He is. The deeper I fell in love with God the more I wanted to demonstrate his love..."
I resonated with this alot. I think growing up with a strong grid of heaven/hell, morality, ect. without a strong understanding of grace can be harmful is not countered with revelation of the absolute kindness of Christ and the power of His indwelling Spirit which does EVERTHING to carry out our salvation. His power within us is the thing we can lean on, eliminating fear of failure which comes from independance, self dependance. When I fear failure and hypocrisy I just tell the Lord that is honestly all I will ever be without Him, and trust Him for His indwelling righteousness to keep me. grace!
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