Jesus Is The Way

  The most disorienting sense of space for those of us afflicted with a fear of heights would see us standing at the top of a skyscraper but looking up a flagpole. There is no sense of solid ground underfoot, and huge emptiness above. The sense of falling in both directions is vulnerability multiplied.   The same as standing on the lip of a sheer cliff with a roiling sea below, as though we are tethered to the earth by the flimsiest thread, and our other option is unfathomable. Helpless and wavering.   With grace we find we’re clinging on to the undeserved favour of God. ‘He chose and called me out of sheer generosity’ (Galatians 1:15 The Message ). In other translations, he called me out of his grace .   I like the word ‘sheer’. It has that cliff-edge risky steepness but also unmitigated blessing. He comes into our vulnerability with an open hand. What God sacrificed out of sheer generosity, his Son, balanced on the edge of the rejection he risked for our benefit. God

  It amazes me that the lower we get the more we find almighty God below us. There are no depths he won’t sink to in order to lift us up, if we will just raise our voice. Think about the depths of human experience, the moral mess we can wallow in. So deep we think we’ll never get free, never get cleaned up, never know we are loved in spite of the mud. And underneath us there we find the degradation of the cross of Christ. That Jesus came as vulnerable, so that our muck could be washed off. Think about how we suffer and hurt. Spiritual and physical. Again, there’s the cross, and the agony of driven nails through bone and sinew and splinters. The agony of a mocking crown to pierce the skin. The suffering of separation from the one he loved so dearly, so that we might be loved. Think again about the wounds we carry. From family, friends, the church. Those who have betrayed and left us wanting. There is God again, deserted and friendless before the night is out, sold for silver, scar

  The old saying that love is blind. I get it. How all our faults and failures are unseen by the one who loves us. A kind of holy bias. In the eyes of the lover we can do no wrong because the lover chooses what to see in us. And yet the love of God sees with crystal clarity, and still loves. Not blind at all but seeing deeply and still forgiving totally. That’s what makes it love. It may be wounded but it clings and longs for the one who cut the scar. This kind of love is beyond us, in every way, but it is a love that can be in us and through us. These three remain: faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Through our faith and hope we can funnel love, as we shape our faith and hope with upward arms. As we look to Christ, looking outside ourselves, our faith and hope in him give us the beating pulse to love the other. Faith and hope can make the unlovable the beloved, and as we trail faith and hope love will surely follow. And in the loving remember we are the beloved too.

  I’ve always imagined an extraordinary life. A life filled to the brim with amazing grace.   The danger is, in looking only for the amazing grace of the extraordinary flashes I will miss the amazing ‘ordinary’ grace given in the routine, the humdrum.   All grace amazes if we know ourselves inside out. Especially if we are well acquainted with our inside. The bits we cover and shield and convince ourselves remain unseen.   But One sees. One sees our bone-deep rottenness and still showers grace in spite of ourselves. One who sees beyond how we see ourselves on our worst days. He is the gift that keeps on giving, the One who unwraps us and names us ‘grace-full’. In Him our undeserving hearts are daily blessed.   The trick is to look for it where we are. To look for the grace of ordinary sight to see the everyday extraordinary. At the kitchen sink, the school gates, the queue, the drive home at the end of a long day.   And soon we see we are no stranger to grace.