Fran, at the Parish Blog of St Edward the Confessor, has a wonderful post where she quotes Aeschylus:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
This is so close to my own experience. All the most wonderful things that God, in his grace and mercy, has had to give me, have come this way, out of darkness and an end of my own strength. I wonder if it's a spiritual law, or just something the matter with me?
These are actually terrible words, when you stop and think them through. To receive this grace against our own will, when we are to ourselves so far from God, is a fearful thing - falling into the very hands of the living God. And yet it was Jesus' own willingness to die, in the teeth of what he most feared, that makes it possible at all. Somehow, reading words like this, amazingly written around 500 years before Jesus' passion, peels layer after layer of obscurity away from the Cross, and yet the mystery only deepens. Holy paradox, blessed enigma, beneath whose shadow we must love to live, and long for mercy...
5 comments:
Mike - when I read the words "falling into the hands of the living God", I felt myself tremble.
I am grateful to this living God who I stand in awe of and love for, yet I resist at almost all times.
Such are the mysteries of grace and mercy.
Peace to you this Sunday Mike. Thank you for the link and for your friendship in the Lord.
Amen, amen.
That seems so familiar to me -- "falling into the hands of the living God". I have a sense of deja vu, reading it. And it reminds me of Isaiah -- "I have carved you in the palms of my hands."
Mike -- Fran sent me. Nice to meet you, and I'll be back.
Good to meet you too, Kate - thanks for the introduction, Fran!
Your deja-vu, Kate, comes I think from Hebrews 10.31: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." I was thinking of that when I wrote what I did. But the Isaiah 49 passage is beautiful, one of my favourites. I hadn't thought of it in this context, but you're right. It's the perfect (and true!) counterbalance to the "fearful" bit...
Mike
(Fran is smiling - on her face and deep in her heart.)
Awful...and awesome! Thanks, Mike, for this.
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