I woke this morning to the realization that I was not alone. An all too familiar guest entered the room, and slipping into the bed managed to find a place between my wife and me. Soon after, the voiceless, but recognizable dialogue began again with my unseen, and I hope, uninvited caller.
All of us are visited and revisited by unseen and unexpected company. Who doesn’t struggle with uninvited guests? Who hasn’t sensed their presence, even if the only evidence is the familiar, but barely decipherable, wispy flow of suggestions, akin to whispers embedded in a passing breeze that overtakes the mind?
To some the guests bring thoughts of grandeur so high that they tempt to lift those they visit far above reality, luring them into an extraordinary world of fantasia that has not, does not, and can not exist. Their guest woos them to escape, leaving behind the disappointing or tragic present, to deny and dismiss the past, in order to paint on the blank pallet of their vivid imaginations a far-fetched future to fly off to. But as is always the case, the winds that carried them away will also let them fall, jolting them back to reality, by the disappointing impact of being brought back down to earth again.
Others, who could never imagine such juvenile and impracticable imaginings, are visited with an invitation to envision things having to do with prominence, power and pride. These winds are not so wispy and subtle, for with them comes not just suggestions, but plans. These stronger winds have enough force behind them to lift up those they visit, enabling them to lie in their beds as if they were sitting upon a throne, molding the world into what it should be, according to some distorted, divine calling,. These “stronger winds”, these “more than just suggestions”, can be highly destructive, and are the winds of change that tyranny and despotism come in on. These tempt us to believe that we can be more than just lifted up, we can be exalted.
Then, there is my guest, and maybe he is yours too. If he is, then “ours”, I think, must have a very low assignment. His mission is not to lift up with subtle praise or exalt with forbidden glory, but to bring down, to discourage and depress. By now we should know his game. By now we should be trained to sense the cold chill of his encroachments into a previously warm and comfortable, but now chilly and crowded bed. But thoughts, like invisible breezes, are mysterious things, and as such, it is difficult, at best, to discern their comings and goings.
So as I laid there in bed, I found myself unexpectedly thinking about what a sinful and worthless life mine has been. As far as I could tell, from the perspective of laying flat on my back, there has been little if any, real fruit that demonstrates a vital, Biblical connection to Christ. I hear from the visitor beside me, “I talk a good game, and have a constant flow of spiritual thoughts and prayers, but all ends there. What significant difference has my life had on that of another’s? I have one genuine friend, who truly pursues me, who calls to talk, who regularly seeks me out. My career is falling down around me, even as the Manufacturer’s warranty on my physical body seems to be running out. We have no substantial savings and therefore no good outlook as regards retirement. All is boiling down to this...I am nothing, I have nothing, I’ve done nothing, I’ve come to nothing.”
But then, in the misty fog of the all too familiar discouragement that predictably precedes an intruding depression; from deep within the jejune and insipid perceived realities of my life, a fresh, perfectly nourished, well-watered, vitally alive sign of life appears. A thought I would have dismissed had it not appeared so abruptly and with such substance. From deep within a crack upon the surface of what feels like an arid and drought-ravished heart, appeared the impossible! In the midst of hints, implications and accusations, suddenly there is this reality, a bright green sprout standing-up like an ensign. In the midst of the blurred and feathered outlines of uncertainty, stands the undeniable and irrefutable evidence of what was always there but could not be seen... grace.
When all feels lost in a fog of discouragement, when all our thoughts insist that perception is reality, that life is winding down to a thing devoid of substance and significance, the grace of God appears. Bursting up and out of places where we would have bet the farm that nothing living exists, appears a confirmation of reality. God is. He is present, and because He is, life is there too. The moment this reality appeared, the instant the spring-green shoot was shown to me, I sensed a chill passing by as if my visitor were returning to where he came from, leaving my heart in a calm. It was as if someone with infinite authority, stood in the middle of my little boat, which was being tossed around like an empty two-liter soda bottle in an angry ocean, and had commanded my thoughts to lie down and be quiet. Then once again it was my wife and me in our bed, warm, comfortable and not so crowded.
There is something so allusive and supernatural about the grace of God that it tends to render those who have genuinely experienced it, nearly speechless when they try to describe it. Like John the Revelator, they stand before that which defies comprehension, revealing the limits of their languages, leaving them to use their best comparative and descriptive phrases to illustrate what they have received, but do not understand. How do we explain this attribute of God’s nature, which has the power to bring those down who have given in to the temptation to exalt themselves; or to so transforms the present as to make temporary excursions into wild imaginings, pal in meaning and substance? And how do we put into words, what it is that lifts us up out of a pit of discouragement, delivering us from oppressive thoughts and relentless memories of failure, not because we are the saddest case of all, but because we are worth more than a million stars and a thousand galaxies to Him who alone possesses that which lifts us? Is it any wonder that those who experience the reality of God’s grace, His absolute undeserved favor, are left astonished whether being rescued from fantasies, brought down when they allowed themselves to be dangerously exalted, or lifted up out of the pits of discouragement and self-pity?
How do we explain it? I do not know, but this I do know. God loves me not because of who I am, what I have or have not done, but because of Who He is. And of all He is and all He possesses, this thing called grace, this indescribable gift, this unfathomable manifestation, is worth exceedingly and abundantly more than all we could ever think or ask for. What God holds out to fallen humanity, far exceeds the most romantic and idealistic dreams that a lost humanity has ever yearned to escape into. In humbling the proud and arrogant, bringing them low, God offers the repentant a place at the table of the King, in the Kingdom of Heaven. In lifting those who have been brought down by years of discouragement and disillusion, God promises that none who put their trust in the Him will ever be put to shame. This thing called grace, this beautiful attribute that speaks to the very nature of Almighty God, so surpasses and satisfies the deepest hungers of our hearts that it should come as no surprise that it defies language.
With it, a life, whether lost in dreams, exalted in a lust for pride and prominence, or cast down in despair, may be completely transformed and made ready for eternity. Without it in this life, we would shrivel-up in a moment and be blown away by a single gust of the winds that come and go over the face of the earth, and our souls forever lost by our own refusal to accept what we can not describe, but may truly experience.
Gary Little, January 14, 2012
