We Love By Grace

 Savior    by Steve Garnaas Holmes

          To you is born this day

          in the city of David

          a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Holy One.

                       —Luke 2.11

On a cold night, bundled in our fears,

tired from taking care of ourselves,

we come, curious:

maybe there's something here for us.

Angels promised a savior,

but this is no one who could bail us out:

a mere infant, who could never fight for us,

or overwhelm our enemies,

sneak us out of the trouble we're in

or take for us the lashes we have coming.

This is no one who could strike a bargain for us.

How could this one save us from the failure

of the lives we were meant to live?

He gazes up at us serenely

with utter trust, and, somehow it seems,

all the love of heaven and earth.

We are struck. Without our willing it,

something in us shifts. Opens.

A deep river long frozen thaws out

and begins to flow, a love beyond our command,

that frees us from all we fear or desire.

By his grace we love, and are saved.

The poet captures what I am coming to understand is the counterintuitive and invisible eternal grace which transforms and liberates.

“A deep river long frozen thaws out/and begins to flow, a love beyond our command,/that frees us from all we fear or desire.” May it be so!

Sometimes I ask the wrong question, pray for the wrong thing(s). I want a visible solution, a tangible change, an audible declaration of liberty. However, these, even if granted, are fleeting and superficial too often. 

I am learning that there is a river of grace, running through you and me and in the space between us. It never ceases giving; we confuse its existence and effectiveness in favor of that which we can see and touch. We are sorely then disappointed. 

Christmas, not the day but the experience in our hearts, causes a reorientation. The questions change. Joy replaces mere giddiness. Compassion replaces guilt assuaging money. We are offered the opportunity to stare into the Mystery and to enter a realm of eternity. 

When we do, 

“He gazes up at us serenely

with utter trust, and, somehow it seems,

all the love of heaven and earth.”

We didn’t know we were asking for such a gift. We didn’t know such transforming love existed, much less that it was ours! 

We are loved by this grace, redeemed and blessed. We love by this grace, radiating a reoriented power.

May we receive it still.