Opening the door of grace
I want to gently open the door of grace in your spiritual life.
When some tells you what you must believe about God or do for God, may you put your hands into the steaming water with the dishes and remember how Jesus washes your soul. Or walk out into the garden barefoot, and turn your hands into the damp soil, and feel the physical world that tells us the story of God.
When there are theological battles that demand your compliance, may you to open a children’s story bible and read the words of rescue and belovedness. May you feel the warm presence of a little child or old person at your shoulder and know…just know. May you drink hot tea in an cafe and see Jesus in disguise all around you. And linger, there, with the Presence of God.
Let us go back to the beginning of the spiritual life and live in the basics and simplicity of bread and life. We must live by the nourishment of God’s word every day, holding onto a word or phrase like a squirrel holds a nut and buries it deep in the ground or in the dark recess of a hollow tree. Let us hide the word of God in our hearts, an intimate space between us and the Creator, and savor it, counting our bountiful harvest of grace and truth for the winter.
Let us eat the bread of life and may it crumble in our hands and fall as breadcrumbs at our feet as we go, with the hopes that others might follow the trail.
Shall we pray as we breathe, the in and out exchange of fear and hope? Inhaling the Holy Spirit and exhaling our anxious thoughts as we live in the breath of God is our holy work.
Will prayer align us to the kingdom and not to our own measures of success and performance? It will as we surrender to it.
People do not need more of us, they need more of God.
We can only give away God if we have received God into our very being. This is it. The work of spiritual formation. We linger with Jesus, we abide with him, and God takes up more and more space in us. So that there is more Jesus and less us. You need less of you and more of God.
Surely good theology, thoughtful praxis and right thinking about God matters, of course it does. It is important to study and to learn and to grow, and at times to contend for what we understand the Bible to be about. But let it not take the place of the eucharist of the soul when we feast of the Presence of Jesus here, right now with us.
In the light of the candle, in the wings of the hummingbird, in the heat of the cup in our hand, all that reminds us of the still small voice of the soul that tells us that we belong to God. Not to a company or a brand, or a mortgage or a job.
Let us walk with Jesus until our hearts burn within us and we dare to ask the hard questions as the bread is broken. Stay, and then let us give away our extra tunic and ask God and one another for the plank be taken out of our own eye first.
Can we find grace together, again?
The spiritual life is meant to be lived together, around the table, and as our feet take us to the places we know God is, with the suffering and with the holy.
Friend, grateful for your presence on this journey of the deeper life.
Sarah
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