When I was a in high school, I hated, hated, hated going to school parties and dances. Would have rather had a root canal. I'm not exaggerating: intense physical pain would have been preferable to my 17-year-old self than having my insecurities intensified and obvious in front of my classmates. Because that's what dances did, for me, anyway: just intensified how out of step, out of tune I was; as if there was music going on all the time, but I couldn't sing in tune, could be in tune.
Is it an accident that the English word "grace" means goodwill and pardon, and also gracefulness?
I remember being in downtown Edmonton and seeing what I was pretty sure was a drug deal go down. And I remember watching the face of the drug dealer. There was something wrong about it. I don't know how else to say it except it was broken: not physically, but there was a kind of shattering about it. He wasn't right.
God's forgiveness and pardon introduces in us a kind of normalicy, a kind of sanity. We start to sing in tune. Our very being starts to pulse in tune with his love, and, receiving grace, we become more graceful, more ourselves. We are delivered from that nightmarish unreality of never being able to get it right because we ourselves are not right. Grace upon grace, and grace unto gracefulness.
2 comments:
That amazing fight scene reminds me of how James Brown could handle a microphone!
Hah! James Brown is a great example of exactly this, Dad.
I remember reading a comment about Aretha Franklin - that her music showed "the beauty of a perfectly realized emotion." I've always like that. You can't sing your way into grace, but grace produces that perfect realization.
Post a Comment