The secret of the mystery is, God is always greater. No matter how great we think Him to be, His love is always greater.
I just finished “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by Brennan Manning last night. It’s funny how books come to us right when they are supposed to, isn’t it? For instance, I’ve heard of this book for years – YEARS – and been told no less than 15 times that I ‘need to read it’. But I just didn’t. I saw it on a clearance table (who knows why? it’s still very popular) and grabbed it. Then it sat on my shelf for 2 years. I finally picked it up last week, read the back and thought “Now.”
I think “now” because it’s been a bit of a journey to get to where I would even have ears to hear what was being written. But over the past few years, I’ve been learning about the resounding “YES!” of God towards humanity. Brian has done quite a bit of work on the theology of this and so our late-night conversations have involved a lot about the Fatherhood of God, the openness of embrace from the Spirit, and so on. Then I read “The Shack” which, in a fiction format, discusses much of the same. And I finally felt a small portion of my soul open up to the possibility of Abba’s “furious love” towards me. And my own lack of ability. I’ve been stripping away the layers for years now, letting go of my need to be best and “all together”, becoming okay with ‘the time in-between’ and generally undergoing a rather personal revolution.
“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest but still play games.”
I used to feel like I couldn’t let myself admit this. I had to somehow “be perfect” even when I was struggling. I had to “fake it til you make it” (baby). And suddenly, God started to open my eyes. Almost three years later, I’ve realised that “grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God….We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not a reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift. “If we but turn to God,” said St. Augustine, “that itself is a gift of God.” My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”
Yes, it was time for this book. And it came right at the moment it needed to be in my life. My only beef is that I don’t have anyone to really talk about it with!
Other favourite thoughts and passages:
- Living by the gospel of grace leads us into what Teilhard de Chardin called the divine milieu – a God-filled, Christ-soaked universe. A world charged with the grandeur of God.
- “I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime. When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, “Later. Now get washed up for dinner.” There would have been more I love yous, more I’m sorrys, but most, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute, look at it and really see it, live it and never give it back. “(Erma Bombeck, “If I Had My Life to Live Over Again”)
- The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace, that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God’s loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.
- “Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share in the wonder of it all.” (Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel)
- Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober and respectable, nor in churchgoing, Bible-toting and Psalm-singing but in our deep and delicate love for one another.
- What shall we say to such an outpouring of love? How shall we respond? First, the love of Christ and His gospel of grace calls for a personal, free and unconventional decision….Second our response to the love of Jesus demands trust. Do we rely on our resume or the gospel of grace? How do we cope with failure?…For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, “come to me, all you who labour and are heavy burdened,” He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged and disheartened along the way. …There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God and then trusting God. You will only trust God as much as you love Him. And you will love Him to the extent you have touched Him, rather that He has touched you….The third characteristic of our response to the gratuitous intervention of Jesus in our lives is heartfelt gratitude.
- I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
- How long will it be before we discover we cannot dazzle God with our accomplishments?
- The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith.
- We accept grace in theory but deny it in practice. Living by grace rather than law leads us out of the house of fear into the house of love.
- Freedom is the cornerstone of Christianity….Freedom in Christ produces a healthy independence from peer pressure, people-pleasing and the bondage of human respect. The tyranny of public opinion can manipulate our lives. What will the neighbours think? What will my friends think? The expectations of others can exert a subtle but controlling pressure on our behaviour.
- The call asks “Do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you? I believe that this question is at the core of our ability to mature and grow spiritually. If in our hearts, we really don’t believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.
- Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else.
- I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.
