Someone else's thoughts on grace
So, I'm reading the Ragamuffin Gospel and it's one of the best books I've ever read. I had no idea how little I understood about how God views us and how underserving of His love and grace I am, but He gives it anyway because He is love and (to quote some supertones) how else would I be grateful if I could do anything to deserve it? Anyway, here's the quote (yeah, it's kinda long, but good):
"In his book Mortal Lessons, Fichard Selzer, MD, writes: 'I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
'Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" She asks.
"Yes," I say, "It will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute."
'All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.'
"Since reading this passage, the image of the husband contorting his mouth and twisting his lips for an intimate kiss with his palsied wife haunted me. Yet something eluded me until one day in prayer, it exploded anew in my memory of the violence on a hill outside the city wall of old Jerusalem."
Okay, so it was a quote from someone he quotes...
And he finishes the chapter with this:
"Grazie, Signore (Thank You, Lord), for Your lips twisted in love to accommodate my sinful self, for judging me not by my shabby good deeds, but by Your love and that is Your gift to me, for Your unbearable forgiveness and infinite patience with me, for other people who have greater gifts that mine, and for the honesty to acknowledge that I am a raggamuffin. When the final curtain falls and You summon me home may my last whispered word on earth be the wholehearted cry,'Grazie, Signore.'"
I thought that was powerful imagery, the infite God of the universe contorting his lips so he could kiss his bride's misshapen mouth.
"In his book Mortal Lessons, Fichard Selzer, MD, writes: 'I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
'Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" She asks.
"Yes," I say, "It will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute."
'All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.'
"Since reading this passage, the image of the husband contorting his mouth and twisting his lips for an intimate kiss with his palsied wife haunted me. Yet something eluded me until one day in prayer, it exploded anew in my memory of the violence on a hill outside the city wall of old Jerusalem."
Okay, so it was a quote from someone he quotes...
And he finishes the chapter with this:
"Grazie, Signore (Thank You, Lord), for Your lips twisted in love to accommodate my sinful self, for judging me not by my shabby good deeds, but by Your love and that is Your gift to me, for Your unbearable forgiveness and infinite patience with me, for other people who have greater gifts that mine, and for the honesty to acknowledge that I am a raggamuffin. When the final curtain falls and You summon me home may my last whispered word on earth be the wholehearted cry,'Grazie, Signore.'"
I thought that was powerful imagery, the infite God of the universe contorting his lips so he could kiss his bride's misshapen mouth.