Monday, April 19, 2010

limping forward

This morning in our reading at the breakfast table, this brilliant sentence ended the meditation:

"Let us rise and go forward from where we are to the next place of freedom, limping forward in the therapy of grace."
John Piper.

What a great image. Limping forward/ therapy of grace. I love it. I am definitely a limper. Never have been athletic. I identify with this halting progress. How appropriate for my spiritual life. I am blind in my progress because I cannot see the spiritual. So my steps are tentative and uncertain. And I am wounded one way or another, whether aware of it or not. Because I am not a creature of grace by nature.

In this life we are neither perfect nor graceful. Limping along. And our culture, so therapy-crazed, hasn't even recognized that the truest therapy of all is Grace.

Grace is my word for this year. Lurking grace, because it catches us unaware. Jeremiah died last week. And grace has snuck in. His friend Mike, subject of prayers and witnessing for weeks before, found Jesus after the memorial service. Grace seeps into another limping soul.

Where are we going in our halting gait? Why, to the next place of freedom. Every once in a while I forget we're born slaves. The trappings of slavery are slowly divested. But as we limp along we find freedom. Ever more freedom. Freedom to lay down our lives.

2 comments:

Jerrene Watzel said...

Yes! Yes! YES!!!! Jeri

Lo said...

Oh, I like both the new words...grace and limping. When you run fast, you might think you can do things on your own, using your own gifts. When you limp, you need the grace of the Lord, sometimes given through others in your life, to be encouraged to keep going. To keep making progress toward the goal. Keep posting these thoughts my friend. Lois