Day 73 - Glimpses of Grace

While visiting with an elderly couple several years ago I witnessed something so remarkable, so inexpressibly lovely I was moved by emotion. The little lady could barely walk, standing from a seated position required extreme sacrifice. As we were talking with her son she visibly struggled to reach down to adjust her stockings and shoes. Her son didn't move, so I was about to stand to offer assistance when her wizened husband, who shuffled on pained legs, slowly, with great effort,kneeled at her feet, and with his gnarled, twisted fingers helped her adjust her stockings and buckle her shoes while she lovingly allowed him to do so. After several minutes, once finished, he looked up adoringly at her smiling face, and the beauty and power of the two made one caused me to gasp. I was so overcome with this moment in time when God allowed me to witness what true love was created to be. That memory will always remain indelibly etched in my mind and heart. Ageless, timeless love, an ethereal moment I was allowed to share.

Travelling through the pages of The Ragamuffin Gospel there is a story the author shares from another book, Mortal Lessons by Richard Selzer MD: 

"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 had 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 that 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's 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 to hers, to show her that their kiss still works."

Each day we pass by, never blinking an eye, never truly seeing past the borders of our own narrow minds. As Easter approaches and we make our small Lenten sacrifices we forget the agony and loneliness Christ suffered on the cross. "Every form of sin and its consequences, sickness and disease of every kind, drug addiction, alcoholism, broken relationships, insecurity, hatred, lust, pride, envy, jealousy, cancer, bone disease, arthritis, and on and on were experienced and carried by 'a thing despised and rejected by men' (Isaiah 53:3) who knew the nadir (lowest point, rock bottom) of an agony such as no one has ever dreamed."  He did that for us, because He chose us from the beginning of time, we were "fashioned from the clay of the earth and the kiss of his mouth." 

To imagine love so wonderful, so unbelievable, so unimaginable, so incomprehensible defies expression. Yet He loves us so much.

I never have to explain my thoughts to Him, He knows. He doesn't walk away from me or chide me for things others misunderstand or lack interest in knowing. He is never too busy to turn His attentive ear to the cries of my heart's longings or wrap His arms around me so I don't feel so alone. He is the one I turn to when I just cannot give another ounce of my life blood or when someone is trying to exact another pound of flesh from my tattered heart or overburdened soul. He understands me, and each breath I take, each beat of my aching, lonely heart is reciprocated over and over again in His intimate knowledge of the pain I bear. Why? Because He died, bled, suffered the agony, shame, derision so I could live, so I can be free. He knows every thing about me, and He still loves me and bids me come to Him.

So thank You, Lord Jesus, for allowing me to see through the lives of others and my own seemingly insignificant life's toils, that beauty comes from ashes, joy from mourning. May my life song sing, may my joy ring, my love rise, and heart give testimony to the grace you have shown to one as unworthy as I, yet free to walk in the beauty of Your holiness.