Reflection This Week
GRACE

It is almost as if it were yesterday, I can remember walking out of a Moral Theology class in seminary in which the topic was God’s grace. At that moment I was overcome with what I thought was a brilliant synopsis of that class, walked up to my Moral Prof and asked, “Isn’t grace simply God’s presence in our lives?” Without breaking stride he replied, “Yes, but it is more than that,” and walked on leaving me there to ponder what he had just said.

     Over the years I have indeed pondered; and even though it has been almost forty years since that very short conversation, I still think I was correct. Grace is God’s presence in our lives even if it is more than that. Yet, if it is all of that, what more do we need to say when trying to define or describe that presence? After all, the intent of my Moral Prof in that class was precisely to do that: to define and describe.

     In all honesty, I do not remember anything about that class, what he said or what he taught, except that post-class “conversation”. In the intervening years I have read much from many and varied authors on the subject, each trying to convey how each understood grace. I now await Amazon’s delivery of Anne Lamott’s Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith to read her take on the subject. I ordered the book because I was intrigued by what she said about grace on Amazon’s webpage.

     “We communicate grace to one another by holding space for people when they are hurt or terrified, instead of trying to fix them, or manage their emotions for them. We offer ourselves as silent companionship, or gentle listening when someone feels very alone. We get glasses of water when they are thirsty.” Our presence in the lives of other people is grace just as grace is God’s presence in our lives because God is present in us when we are present to another.

     Yes, that presence – God’s in our lives, ours in the lives of others, others’ in our lives – can sometimes not be so pleasant and can even be anything like one would think of as grace. I can be a real pain sometimes. So can you. So can God. However, even in that pain there can be found grace. For often it is simply in attempting to find or recognize grace in the presence of another that we find God. Sometimes it is simply seeing God in the presence of another that we experience grace.

     The truth is that we too often either take for granted or do not recognize God’s presence in our lives. Even more we also fail to realize that most of our ministry as Christians comes from just being present, in Lamott’s words, in “silent companionship”. We need not say anything nor should we because no word can convey or replace the simple grace of our presence. We know that to be true because we all have felt God’s grace coming to us through the silent presence of someone who loved us enough to be there.

     Grace is everywhere because God is everywhere because God is in us. One only can begin to wonder what both our individual and our corporate lives would be like were we to become fully aware of God’s presence, God’s grace, in and through our lives.               WJP