Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The Rev. Rob Stevens

Patience and Grace

Have patience. Easier said than done. I hear people say that they are, “Praying for patience.” I must confess that I think to myself…”Oh DON’T do that!....Pray for GRACE!” I know it is just theological gymnastics but, right now I believe the world needs grace. Grace to hear, grace to see, grace seek to understand, grace to let a winner win and grace to let those who lose grieve and God willing GRACE to remember that we are all in a part of the same family…the human family.

Frederick Buechner wrote the following about GRACE. I return to it often and pray that it brings you comfort and hope.

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words