Grace

03Jan
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

- Ephesians 2:8–9; 4:31-32


Five letters; huge word: Grace.


Our dinner hostess last night said, “For dessert we have choices. We have King cake…” I interrupted, “Isn’t it culinary of not Christian heresy to eat King Cake before Epiphany?”


Said our hostess, “It doesn’t have Mardi Gras tri-color sugar on it, just blue and white…” Oh,” I said, “it must be a ‘Virgin Mary, Queen of heaven cake.” A friend at the table, a brilliant pediatrician and cell biologist quickly asked, “Then can I have the Baby Jesus?” Putting my hand on his shoulder, I said, in a preacher-ly voice, “My son, you already have the Baby Jesus. You have had Him, and He you since you were a zygote in your mother’s womb. (Deepening my voice and slowing…) That’s the point of it all, GRACE. You and Jesus…Just like that!” I added, holding up my hand with two crossed fingers.


 “You had me at Zygote!” said the brilliant physician. 

 

It started out as a glib reparté, but finished as a truth we abandon all too soon. The lump of sacred emotion in our throat at Midnight Christmas Mass is quickly refocused on Twelfth Night, …not the one with the Magi.


Grace.


It is the sovereign, unearned act of God whereby we are made fully redeemed and our sins forgiven, even when we are in a sinning state. Amazing. Always and forever. Beautiful. Abundant. Nice, but it would help if I could see it.


It is the hand that reaches into the pit and lifts us out and says, “Try again.” It is the fresh water of divine truth that washes from our eyes the grit of self-righteousness. It is the cloth covering the common table, that binds us together at His banquet, and covers our crippled parts. It is the net cast by our fisherman Creator that pulls us into the boat of Christian Life and vocation — often gasping and fighting. It is the garden from which the fruits of the spirit spring. It is the Peace that surpasses all human understanding. And it is there for our embrace by Faith alone.


Five letters; huge word: Faith…

 

Musical Reflection - Amazing Grace - Alan Jackson


God our Creator and wellspring of all Grace, help us to reach toward the infinitude of your Grace with a renewed Faith, one of ultimate importance in our lives. Amen.

Grace

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