The vertigo of grace

 

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 on the cliff-edge knows our vertigo and enters into it. For our sakes.

 

Sheer generosity that stands on the brink and pours down from hand to land, like seeds scattered wildly (Matthew 13:2-4).  God lavishes his grace upon us. Our duty is to catch and cling to it as it falls.

 

God sends vertiginous grace to catch us mid-fall and plant us. Solid and rooted, threaded and held.

 

Such generosity can take the breath away as we stand on the edge of it, knowing what it cost. Knowing who I am. Knowing I don’t deserve it but feeling its bounty like a fall into open arms.