Grace

Gerald May once wrote "grace threatens all my normalities"  It took me a while to get it.  But then,after time, that statement began to make sense.  Grace threatens all that I once thought was normal and true.  I threatens the way I look at the world.  At others.  At life.  Even at myself.  It has become normal, over 50 odd years (OK, its closer to 60) for me to think of myself as "not enough."  This is one of the great demons I must fight with on a regular basis.  That profound feeling that somehow I don't measure up.  But grace threatens this dysfunctional belief and says, "God loves me! God loves me.  God loves me.  God loves me!"    It is normal for me to look at certain people and think they are messed up harbingers of evil.  That they are hateful, or greedy. Alas, it is normal for me to find people I despise.  But grace  reminds me that these people were created in God's image, and God loves them as much as that saintly person I adore. Anne Lamott, in thinking about this says "it drives me crazy, that God seems to have no taste and no standards."  It drives me crazy too.  But when I am in the sphere of grace I remember it is a good thing.  That way God can love me too.

The amazing thing about grace is how is changes us.  Grace means you are in a totally different place than you were before.  Grace means you are in a place you could never have gotten to on your own.

If I am really honest, my old "normalities" are often pretty sad.  They are full of fear, prejudice, and selfishness.  I am so thankful, that God can challenge those old thoughts, feelings, values and beliefs, and move me into that new place where grace abounds.  I like the way Paul puts it in Ephesians 2.  "For it is by grace that you have been saved, though faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift from God - so that no one can boast.  For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  Now that is truly a "new normal."