Grace moves us from enmity or neglect of God to a place of embrace and friendship. Grace frees us from the destructive forces within our own being. Grace makes us gracious towards others. The grace of God in Christ makes us more Christlike.
Eckhart is, therefore, correct. Grace is dynamic. It moves us. It
reorients us. It makes us more truly human. It makes us more Godlike.
Reflection
The power of forgiving grace transforms us and makes us open to extend love and goodness to others.
Psalm 84:1–2
February 18
The Heart of the Matter
While a generous person is known for his or her generosity, such a person should be primarily appreciated for who he or she is, and not only for what one does and gives. So it is with God. The great Life-giver is to be loved even in times of
darkness and difficulty.
There is little doubt that life in the modern world is very pragmatic and utilitarian. It is all about progress and benefits for me. As a consequence, little attention has been given to the true meaning and purpose of life. But life is more than security and material much-having. It is also about love and beauty. It has to do with relationships, with care, with giving and receiving, with forgiveness.
A vibrant spirituality at the heart of life cannot be one of mere
benefits and blessings. This follows too much the contours of our present age. Instead, such a spirituality should focus on the source of all things. Thus the focus is on the Giver, and not only on the gifts.
Thomas à Kempis points us in the right direction. He notes, “A wise lover considers not so much the lover’s gift as the giver’s love. He attends more to the giver’s affection than to the gift’s value.”49
And so it is. The source of all things is the loving heart of God who called all things into being and who recreates us in love to be whole, full of goodness, and in service and care to the neighbor and stranger.
Thought
The heart of the matter is the loving heart of God and not only the
blessings that God gives.
Psalm 69:1–3
February 19
God’s Strange Way
There is a strange contradiction in the way we so often live the Christian life. We so easily take God for granted. And we so often get upset when God does not respond to our cry for help in the way we want.
One of the flaws of the Christianity of the modern world, particularly in the West, is that Christians have the idea God is there just for them. They are the center and God is there just to bless them.
There is little idea that things should be the other way round. God is the center and we should live our lives for the glory and purposes of God.
This flawed way of living the Christian life means we have
expectations regarding the way God should act towards us and on our behalf. Usually, we have the idea that God should jump to our attention. Some have the idea that God is their butler.
That things are different is a lesson we need to learn, however
confronting and painful that may be. St. John Chrysostom begins to point us in the right direction. He writes, God “does not cut calamities short at the outset, but averts them only as they approach their climax when
almost all have abandoned hope.”50 Thus, God does not wrap us up in
cotton wool. But God does come to our aid.
And God is not at our beck and call. God has his own sovereign way with us. God’s way with us is one of love and care, but so often God works differently than our expectations. Thus in faith we have to embrace God’s strange way with us.
Prayer
I will with difficulty bend my will to yours, O God, and embrace your mysterious way with me. Amen.
James 2:1–5
February 20
Equality
It is stating the obvious to say our world is deeply divided: the first world and the two-thirds world; rich and poor; the powerful and the oppressed; majority groups and minorities. In the community of faith it can and should all be very different.
Throughout the entire Bible there is a consistent message that God has a heart for the poor and powerless and such persons should be treated with love, care, and justice.
That message is in the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. If there is anything that is clear in the biblical story, it is this message: love of God involves love of neighbor and in particular the poor, the fatherless, the widow, those in distress, those oppressed, and those in need. Thus to have a Christian heart is to have a heart for the poor.
The place where this great generosity of heart should begin is in the community of faith. But often this is not the case, hence the challenge of St. Augustine. He writes, “But it ought never to be that in thy Tabernacle the persons of the rich should be welcome before the poor, or the nobly born before the rest.”51
The great vision of Scripture is a new humanity in Christ. This is a humanity in which the way of Christ is embodied and where the old ethnic, economic, and gender barriers are broken down. When the church lives this vision, its witness will be revolutionary. Living this vision could change our world.
Reflection
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”
(Gal 3:28).
Psalm 119:124–25
February 21
Love of Knowledge
The Christian life is all about faith, love, and prayer. But it is also about the knowledge of God and in that light our
knowledge of ourselves and of our world.
Sometimes in certain circles of Western Christianity things are played off against each other. Work is played off against prayer. Spirituality is played off against daily duties and responsibilities.
But the Christian life can only be lived well as an integrated whole. Head, heart, and hand; knowledge, spirituality, and service, belong
together. The one dimension impregnates the other.
St. Bernard points us towards a further integration, the inter-
connectedness between love and understanding. He writes, the one “who understands truth without living it, or loves without understanding,
possesses neither the one nor the other.”52
To love God also means knowing God and this knowing is both
informational and existential. In other words, we know things about God and we know God experientially.
This is equally true of the neighbor and our world. To love the
neighbor well involves knowing our neighbor. And to know the neighbor in love is to truly know him or her.
Equally we are invited, not simply to know things about our world, but to love our world—to love our world for the sake of Christ. This means to love our world redemptively and transformationally.
Thought
To know and see in love is to see truly.
Hebrews 12:3
February