The Holiness of Grace

Some days breakfast with your devotions is a great idea. Other days, not so much.  Especially if the devotions you are reading are on your tablet, and the phone rings, and your oatmeal . . . well, you get the picture. Thankfully my keyboard has dried out enough that only a couple keys still remain sticky!  

I'm a mess, and I know it.

 Do you ever feel that messiness when you look at yourself? 

This Chronic Illness journey has taught me more about the state of my own "messiness" than I ever thought I could understand.  It seems that there are days that no matter how hard I try, I just can't "cut the mustard," as we used to say in my childhood small town.  


It wasn't always this way. People depended on me to be the strong one--the one who could be faithful to the end, and responsible to her core. And when I was thrown into situations beyond my understanding, I knew that in order to survive, I would have to find my strength in God's strength.  And He came through for me, for our family, again and again. He let me walk through troubled water, and through places and events that made no sense. He let me walk through places of Silence, when I doubted I would ever hear His voice again.  

He let me 

           voice my questions

                     share my struggles

                              come to the end of myself

And then He met me there to show me how He had never left my side, and was walking with me all along, through all of my doubting.

But what happens when God lets you know

that the path you are entering

is one where He will not

make you stronger?

In fact, walking the pathway

means that you

will become weaker?

Will my heart contain the

trembling?

Will my soul bear the

frailty?

 

I have been reading C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, as part of the online Book Study that Michele Morin is hosting at her site, Living Our Days. This week, while I am still absorbed in watching Orual's teacher, "The Fox" express his own heart, a continuing theme that keeps running throughout the story would not leave my mind. The book is a re-telling of the myth of Psyche, told through the eyes of the Princess Orual, Psyche's older sister. When Orual is approaching the end of her life, she begins our story with the very theme that has been filling my mind: she is angry at the gods, and she is convinced that the gods, themselves, hate her. 

Orual is someone who has never experienced any of God's Grace. 

I was someone who took that very Grace for granted.

But several years ago, when I stepped out of my comfort zone of Grace-filled-situations, and journeyed alongside those who had never known the comfort of Grace, my eyes began to open, and my heart began to feel how this very GOD, who is so dear to me, could feel too large and too HOLY for a mere human to approach.


From her earliest days, Orual had a fear of the gods, but when she was confronted by a situation beyond her control, and set in the room with the priest, who demanded horrific things of them all, Orual says, "the room was full of spirits, and the horror of holiness." 

My mind immediately knew that she was facing the darkness from the enemy of our souls. But then my heart remembered my own

eye-opening relationships, and my journey alongside those who had never known the God of Grace.

And I felt in my own soul

         the overwhelming bigness of a God that I could not approach,

                  the horror of a HOLINESS that contrasts

                             the messiness within my own soul.


Even if I looked into the longing of my heart for 

        SOMEONE bigger than myself,

                how could my trembling heart ever face HIM?


And yet . . .

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness;
    tremble before him, all the earth.

Psalm 96:9 NIV







These very words from our God, 
Himself, 
speak to the
trembling
that my weak soul 
now carries.
But it is this very weakness
that has moved HIM
to compassion.

  

Here in this place of weakness,
I know that I have
NOTHING
to offer the God
who created
everything I see.


But He opened Heaven
and gave me everything
when HIS LOVE
sent Jesus.


I can no longer accept a
CHEAP GRACE.
my JESUS 
gave Himself,
the only
ONE,
who opened a way
for me to step into
the Holy Place. 



"For it is from God alone that you have your life through Christ Jesus. He showed us God’s plan of salvation; he was the one who made us acceptable to God; he made us pure and holy and gave himself to purchase our salvation"

1 Corinthians 1:30 TLB 


This path set before me?
I can say,
as I have never known before,
that these words hold new meaning
for me:

 "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."
2 Corinthians 12:9 


Where are you
on this path marked by Grace?
Are you in a place
that reeks of the 
"Horror of Holiness?"

There is a way
for you, my friend,
to plunge into that Comfort of Grace.

Jesus is that ONE,
and He longs to give
God's Grace to you as well.

If you are interested in checking out all of the posts pertaining to the book study of C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces" you can find an index by clicking here.

 

I'm linking this week over at:
#TellHisStory, Jennifer Dukes Lee