There were days when I knew about God. Two-dimensional stories slumbering on pages of dusty books. Prayers that gave way to grocery lists, or awakened offenses, or haphazard thoughts of wooden pews. Familiar and traditional, but lifeless and religious. Sunday dresses and smiles; Bible covers and Aqua Net; waxed floors, tiny wooden chairs and the smell of crayons; hymnals and liturgy; fresh air filling my lungs, emancipating sun warming my face after reverent benedictions. Sermon after sermon left behind as we pulled from the parking lot each week.
And then there are todays. Days when I know not so much about God as what God can do. I see it, like leaves rocking with the wind in the tops of the trees. It is grace. Grace that emerges more in the eccentric and broken than in the appropriate. Grace that bears us up through storms and chaos more than through peace. Grace that draws us closer to the Giver rather than launching us out onto the precipice of self-sufficiency. Grace that fills and refills and overfills us with life and hope and grace for others; that never seems to end even when I'm certain I need no more of it. Grace that takes me to places I've never been and whispers sweet, sweet comfort deep within my soul; grace that comes when I feel inadequate or look rumpled or smell of sleeplessness or have tasted defeat. Grace that releases me from doing it all and being enough; grace that allows me to release others as well. Grace that comes to us in the kindness of others; or the Living Word of God; or the refrain I hum as I try to quiet a restless child; or the simple words "praying for you" that appear as a text message just as I begin my day; or the matchsticks in an old jelly jar that remind me of pizza eaten on the tailgate and fireworks reflected on the faces of my blessings only hours before; or the sun on my face as I bid momentary "goodbye" to our church family, the sermons and worship we share lived out, by God's grace, in our neighborhoods, in our homes, in our lives until we meet again.
Grace that I thought I would only find in rightness and order and good grammar has been deluged upon me in the ugliest, most difficult, most disorderly and unexpected of circumstances. Wave upon wave.
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