Monday, December 11, 2017

Isaiah 40:6-8

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever.

The grace of failure

I almost succeeded yesterday. I gave voice to the grace that is in me.

It is not my grace, but the grace of the One who is the Loving Mystery we have long labeled God. The word God, for me, gets in the way most of the time. I just know this Unspeakable One as Mystery and as Love who comes and flows through me and so many … and in so many places.

I seldom succeed to bring the Voice of Grace to the fullest expression, such as I am able. I usually stumble around and know how short I fall.

But yesterday I came close, or as close as I can come to speak the truth I know within.

But even this success falls woefully short. For the grace who comes and flows in us is eternal and steadfast. It does not waver. It is beyond every human capacity to express in word and act.

But it does not matter. For it is better to have struggled and failed at grace than to have succeeded in anything less.

Expressing the grace of God is our essential human endeavor. It is this that makes us human.

We always fall short. But our failures always bring us back to the wonder of grace who smiles at our every attempt to speak what can never be spoken.

Pr. David L. Miller