Exhaling

The grace of transformation may occasionally beckon us to walk unfamiliar paths in the world, but more often it leads us right back to where we were, only new. Like Scrooge, who begins and ends his story right in the countinghouse with Bob Cratchit. Nothing has changed, and everything has changed. It’s Your way in the world – hidden, yet obvious to those with eyes to see, renewing all things from the inside out.

We deal with ordinary things in extraordinary ways, the mundane things never becoming boring because each moment brings the greatest adventure to us anew – the opportunity to penetrate the veil of the commonplace and find another way to love for Your sake. And each choice to love is a point of intersection of the timeless with time, where that impossible union – the mystery of the Incarnation – takes place in our lives, step by step, choice by choice.

All the countless details of the day, the trifling activities that take up our time and energy, if we but do them as we should, not withholding ourselves, can please You. These things are the small part we play in striving to reach You and bring You to others.

We can only love “in minute particulars,” as William Blake said, and this is true regarding our love for You as well as our neighbor. Love is in the details, not in the throbs of largesse that achieve nothing unless they drive us to attend more generously to those particulars, those mundane particulars in which You are so well hidden.

This is where faith brings us, isn’t it? What faith does it take, after all, to recognize You transfigured before us in the profound and mysterious? These events are obvious, and we are not instantly transformed by them (Peter was still Peter, impulsive to build booths, on Tabor). On the other hand, what faith it takes to recognize You hidden in the subtle urgencies of the day! The child awake at 2 am, the unfinished laundry, the meal to be prepared, the rambunctious children, the impatient spouse, the throbbing head, the paper scraps and crumbs that make up the day. These do not readily reveal Your “I AM,” but they do reveal Your will, which is enough. And our consistent embrace of Your will DOES transform us.

Yes, this takes great faith, to see Your omnipotent will in the most ordinary things. And how much more does it take to see Your goodness and mercy in the frustrations and disappointments and confusions we face, particularly when these come in response to our efforts to love and serve You. You draw us to You through our weakness and failures. And while it is natural to feel discouraged at what we are, You give us the grace to rise above that and become what You created us to be. Even more, every natural impulse we have, in spite of the fact that it is natural, must be thrown off to make way for every raw truth. Every natural impulse we have can become an idol for us if we are not willing to thrust it aside and make room for the impulses of grace. If we cling to what is merely natural in us, under the pretext that it is only natural, it can become an obstacle to Your work in us.

And if we are desirous of avoiding the superficial view, trying to chop away the encrustations of devotion and language that obscure what You ARE and what we are in You, then we must be just as eager to be freed of our own impulses and ideas, whether of nature or environment or circumstance, if they obscure those realities….

Father, transform us all in Christ, so that His cross is our guide, and His Spirit informs our every action. May we have no impulse of our own, but let us be moved by the impulses of grace, so that our living and breathing may glorify You. Let us comprehend at last what it means to have died to sin and to live for You. Give us the grace to embrace the life of radiance Christ won for us by His death, resurrection, and ascension, to live the life of joy and peace promised to those who love Him.