Anamchara

Pure Grace

I try to recreate moments or feelings that meant something to me, but it is never the same. I cannot recreate any more than I can create. Grace just happens. Like manna from heaven, moments of clarity are just that - moments; acts of trying to recreate special moments are futile.

Jesus' remark about my becoming like a little child comes to mind. A child does not try to capture moments of joy. Children live in pure grace. They take every moment as a gift, experience it, and then move on.

The experience and those feelings I had on that mountain in Colorado years ago at a Young Life camp cannot be recaptured, nor should they be. I have spent parts of my life trying to return there.

'Live in the moment', I'm telling myself. Like the wind, the Spirit of God blows where it will. If I try to recapture even one of those graceful movements of God, I may camp out there, maybe form a cult around that movement, however fleeting it may have been, and I will not mature, and I will not move on towards the promised land.

The stark fear that I will never experience again what made me feel so alive keeps me in a prison of my own making - a prison where I do not trust God to provide for me.

"I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him."
Romans 12:3 (The Message)

posted by Anamchara @ 7:33 AM