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Friday, January 11, 2008

grace finds beauty in everything

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty live… It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage,. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as through a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything. Do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we will experience grace” (Paul Tillich).


Grace calls out. “You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken, or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.”


I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us…. (Anne Lamott)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this was SO needed.


also, i remember you reading these things when you talked about psalm 51 at sanctuary. and that probably is the sermon i remember most intensely.

i love you, andrew! thank you for posting this.