Stooping to Meet Grace

“If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel—on your knees, boy.”

—Excerpt from U2’s, Mysterious Ways.

Boy meets girl. Boy likes what he sees. Boy is determined to chase and bring captive his love—for his sweetheart. Girl sees. Girl says, ‘Not so quick now.’ Girl applies conditions. Boy wrangles. A negotiation takes place. He succeeds or fails. His success (or failure) is determined by his will.

This scenario is normal to life; we see it take place or hear of it taking place every day.

Life is a bunch of paradoxes within ironies within enigmas. Boy meeting girl involves a lot of this mystery. And this is another one right here:

In our willingness to come to know the Holy, we must deliberately stoop to the will of the Almighty, against the determination of our own wills. In doing so, we see that God has already stooped; we are, in a very real sense, ready for his capture to life. So, God stoops (first), then so do we. Enter the process of salvation.

Everyone has the very same opportunities to meet Grace in life. Grace is God.

Catching God and becoming saved is essentially the same as boy meeting girl and wanting to establish a relationship. Yet, grace changes the deal. God is the girl who accepts the advance unconditionally.

And it’s after such time that we realise that to grow with God (and keep the relationship vibrant and real) there are then conditions. If we want to kiss the sky we have to first learn how to kneel. It’s a humble spirit that God seeks in us, to grow us according to his abiding grace.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart,

O God, you will not despise.”

—Psalm 51:17 (NIV).

God expects us to come in our emotive baby belief, but he cannot leave us that way. It’s his will that we engage with the heart of Spirituality, and determine the true rudiments of life—it’s a divine struggle. He desires the scales to fall completely from our eyes—and this can only truly happen via a full and thorough and ongoing investigation.

True humility is the only basis for a correct understanding of God and life, and our existence in the mix of all that. It is the virtue required to both stoop and meet grace and remain there long enough to have our spiritual batteries charged to the truth, commencing with a programme of godly discipleship which will last the rest of our lives.

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.