“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
On This We Can Agree
“By far the best way I know to engage the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night. I believe that it is very difficult to know who we are until we understand where and when we are. I think everyone in every culture has felt a sense of awe and wonder looking at the sky. This is reflected throughout the world in both science and religion. Thomas Carlyle said that wonder is the basis of worship. And Albert Einstein said, “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.” So if both Carlyle and Einstein could agree on something, it has a modest possibility of even being right.”
—Carl Sagan
The Gift is not Grace Kelly
Every time I teach, I learn. So it was this weekend when I was in the middle of a talk on Loaded Words. I was telling the story of a dear friend who had come to faith about the same time as me. She had fallen in love with our church community and served it in all sorts of unique and wonderful ways. She had loved the feeling of community, of relationships, of belonging, of family, and of the mystery of the good God at the center of it all. She especially loved the Holy Spirit. But as I’ve gone deeper, it became clear to me that she’d been making an end run around the tough stuff: sin, repentance, confession, judgment—all the hard, mean-sounding words that keep people in the culture away from the church and far too many in the church from anything like real spiritual maturity.
How does this happen? How does someone spend 20 years as an active member of a good Lutheran church, with sound teaching and preaching, and only lick the frosting? This was the question I posed to the workshop attendees on Friday, but it wasn’t until I was back at the hotel that I had clarity on the answer.
It’s Grace’s fault.
People, I suspect, are making the mistake of misfiling “Grace” in their minds with the happy, easy words. You know the ones I mean: Love, Joy, Hope, Peace, Community. It is not hard to hear these words in a sermon. In fact, for many, these warm, fuzzy words are what the church is all about. And although these words have deep theological meanings, and are tied to the gifts and promises of God in ways that are not always happy and easy, they still mean, for the most part, what they mean out in the world.
Not so with Grace.
Grace does not belong in the grouping of happy, easy words. Grace belongs in the “sin” family. And it may just be hardest word of all. Because as C. S. Lewis tells us, “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” If we allow ourselves to hear the word Grace as an easy, happy word, we avoid the humiliation of “losing” our precious claim to being our own God. When the pastor says “grace,” people can opt instead to register something beautiful and glowing, nimble and lithe. They can imagine the Grace of God as giving them an ease to their step, and a light all around them. They can picture the gift of Grace as something that will lead them to walk through the world a bit like—well, you know who— with doors opening, and heads nodding and smiling, as if some beautiful new ambassador of Jesus has arrived. I’m beginning to suspect that a lot more people than we know are thinking of Grace as some sort of holy moisturizer that plumps their cells with goodness from the outside. 
Sorry. But if that’s your understanding, you’ve got the wrong Grace.
Grace is a word you need to find down in the basement with the other hard words. Down in the basement after a flood and the mold’s begun to settle in. Down in the basement with the stagnant water and the mold and now the rats moving in, gnawing and breeding. This is where Grace speaks. Here, where all the darkest parts of ourselves—the resentments, the envy, the pride, the ambition, the lust and the fear—all the snark in the pit of our souls standing naked in the muck and taunting God. “See, you got me all wrong.” Only then can God give us these glorious words of mercy and affirmation: “Nope, you got Me all wrong.”
This is Grace. And we find it in the same place it was first offered us by Christ: in the wretched, gasping, flesh-and-blood center, where He calls us to himself and then raises us up with Him, moving the word Grace down from the basement and up to the glorious light on the highest shelf with all the other easy, happy words. Now you can place it there, next to Love and Joy and Peace and Hope. Now you can wear this Grace like the Princes or Princesses you are, in the royal priesthood that God has called each of us to.
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
As we teach and share and help each other along the way, let’s make sure folks get the Grace God intended.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2: 1-10)
Into The Deep
When I used to teach Junior Great Books to middle school kids I would train them not to answer a question too quickly. Put your hand down. Sit with it. You can’t possibly have something thoughtful to say that quickly. Wait a minute. Wait 30 seconds. See if something beyond your first impulse rises to the surface. Something about this photo makes me want reassert that old caveat. Take your thumb off the “like” button. Sit with it. See if anything rises up.
by Tyler Stableford
This Lent I’m giving up Lent
When I first came to faith I was excited to make all the spiritual practices my own. Every year, I would choose something to forgo. At first I gave up the obvious things like wine or sweets, and experienced the feeling of my 6-week successes as transcendence. In retrospect, my delight was probably more akin to pride. The hardest sacrifice I ever made was the year I gave up my nightly soak in a hot tub—something many would consider a foolish luxury, but which, to me, is like breathing. The enormity of this abstention made a big impression on my kids, inspiring them to give up big things, too: without me even saying a word, my son—in the prime of his early teens—gave up Playstation 2. For forty days and forty nights!
As the years went on, I graduated to character issues like giving up the expressing of strong opinions. I think I did that several years in a row. It helped. It served a purpose. As did the year I gave up the using of any plastic bags ever, anywhere—even if I left them in my car; for Lent I went back out and got them. And of course, I jumped on board with the whole wave of new Lenten practices that invite people not to eliminate something but rather to pick something up: daily prayers, reading, or Bible study, typically. But as these were already part of my daily routine it was only a matter of amounts.
I started thinking about what I wanted to do this year for Lent way back in January. It wasn’t until this morning that I knew: I’m giving up Lent. Not because it’s not a beautiful practice or that good can’t come from it or that we don’t need rituals to shape our year, but because of the 3 Solae. Sola Gratia. Sola Fides. Sola Scriptura. Grace Alone. Faith Alone. Scripture Alone. These are the foundation of the faith and I’m not sure we honor this foundation by putting so much emphasis on something that is not Scriptural. Unlike other church practices such as Baptism and Holy Communion, there is simply nothing about Lent in the Bible. It is not commanded, nor required. It is not even mentioned.
Yes, we can say that we are seeking to follow the model of the forty days that Jesus retreated to the wilderness to fast and pray and overcome temptation in preparation for His ministry, but this is all we’re ever asked to do. To follow Jesus’ example, day in, day out. Maybe if the church actually incorporated the part about empowering each of us for a new ministry then Lenten sacrifice would take on new potency. But I’ve never heard a peep from anyone, anywhere, about using the time to prepare to launch something—to set out, to start new—after Easter. Typically, Easter is a glorious day of Hallelujah! and He is Risen! followed by a rush to indulge in the thing that was given up, followed by, well, not much at all until the next burst of excitement at Pentecost.
This does not take away from the beauty of being reminded on Ash Wednesday that “from dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” (Gen. 3:19). Or the power of the witness of walking through the day with ashes on your forehead, an act that never fails to start a conversation. 
And if we experience a deepening in our commitment to Jesus by incorporating a sacrificial or enriching act as a discipline in the days that lead us to the Cross, then it is a wonderful practice, to be sure. Maybe I’ll join you again next year.
But for now, for me, as I celebrate my 20th year as a believer, I think I’ll live and breathe and have my being in, with, and through the season of Lent in Christ Alone. “For freedom, Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1).
Soli Deo Gloria
Heather Choate Davis 