Grace.

"You called and You shouted, broke through my deafness, now I'm breathing in, and breathing out, I'm alive again.  You shattered my darkness, washed away my blindness, now I'm breathing in, and breathing out, I'm alive again." - Matt Maher, Alive Again.

Dangle.  We were dead, hard-core.  We had no chance.  We were hopeless, and yet our darkness was shattered, our eyes were cleared, and life was given.  This is awesome.  

And we pass by it.  Everyday, we forget about it.  Just like our previous (or present) life (not talking reincarnation here, folks, more like regeneration), we blindly run to death.  In the words of John Donne, in his Holy Sonnet #1:

"I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;

I dare not move my dim eyes any way,

Despair behind, and death before doth cast

Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste

By sin in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;

Only thou art above, and when towards thee

By thy leave I can look, I rise again;

But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,

That not one hour my self I can sustain." 

 

That's just it.  We may not chose death, but we're sure running to it.   "And when towards thee..I can look, I rise again."  Even though my blogs may sound like a broken record, this is it!  By Christ's power, people rise.  The lame are healed, the blind can see, and the dead rise from death. 

 

The dead rise from death!  We can't be good enough to work our way into heaven.  We can't earn God's love.  We will never be able to impress God.  We've grown accustomed to the thought that "God loves good little boys and girls."  And "if you are polite and don't kill people or do porn or lie, then God will love you." 

 

Something is wrong with that.   As Brennan Manning says in The Ragamuffin Gospel:

"Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace."

When you read the Gospels, you will notice that Jesus never hates on the poor in Spirit, or the prostitutes, or the broken, but He comes and completely blows down the self-righteous doors of the hypocrites and the Pharisees.  

 

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, not by works, so that no man can boast."

 

"As Jesus was walking on from there he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, 'Follow me.'  And he got up and followed him.  Now while he was at table in the house it happened that a number of tax collectors ad sinners came to sit at the table with Jesus and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ' why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?'  When he heard this he replied, 'It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick.  Go and learn the meaning of the words: Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice.  And indeed I cam to call not the upright, but sinners.'

Dangle.  In finishing the sonnet of John Donne that I started before, here's the last couplet:

 

"Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his (satan's) art,

And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart." 

 

God's not giving up on the chase.  So as you go along your way to school or to jobs or whatever it is that you do, remember this:  Grace and mercy are the only ways to draw near to God, trying to do works after works isn't going to do anything.  God's drawing your heart.  Now go out and be drawn.