grace

I’ve kept an orchid in my office for two or three years now, the most profusely blooming orchid you could possibly imagine. In the last couple months or so, its spray of prolific yellow blossoms grew so heavy, I had to fasten the stem to the window frame with a hair clip, just to keep it upright. I’ve probably taken fifty photographs of this orchid over the years in morning, afternoon and evening light. I’ve never grown tired of looking at it.

I recently rearranged my office a bit. Inspired by Emily Freeman’s sunroom office makeover, I switched up my desk to give myself more workspace, Goodwilled a bunch of knickknacks and shifted the orchid from the top of the bookshelf to the corner of my desk. It provided a lovely symmetry with the lamp I set on the opposite corner.  I felt very modern and minimalist with my symmetry and my clean space and my white-painted furniture.

However, not long after I rearranged my office, I noticed an influx of ants, mainly on my desk, but some on the floor beneath it too. I thought at first they were emanating from my laptop. I’m a snacker-writer, so I worried that a few too many crumbs had fallen between the keys and provided a pantry of sorts for the ants.

But yesterday morning I discovered the source of the ants was not my laptop, but my beautiful orchid. When I gingerly lifted the plant from its plastic pot, I saw immediately that the root ball was swarming with hundreds of ants. They’d made a nest amid the moist, gnarled roots. Beneath all its prolific beauty, down at the root, the plant was a mess – decaying, rotting and full of ant eggs and ant babies and ant parents.

Initially I tried to save the orchid, but as I stood over the kitchen sink with the plant in my hand and ants, precious eggs in their mouths,  scattering helter skelter across the counter and down the cabinets, I quickly realized my efforts were futile. Finally, ants running up my arms and under my sleeves, I dashed out the front door and dumped the whole plant, pot and all, into the trash can at the curb.

Here’s the question I asked myself yesterday afternoon as I sat at my desk, its white surface disinfected and clean of ants, the orchid gone, a lone white peony bloom in its place:

How many times in my life have I been wooed by the picture-perfect exterior — the intoxicating, alluring blooms — only to discover that my desires were actually rotten at the core?

Readers, numbers, book contracts, sales, achievement, success. I’ve wanted it all – a whole bountiful spray of blooms, bending heavy under the weight of abundance. And what have I found in my single-minded pursuit? What have I discovered at the core of my ambition?

My desires are infested with darkness. It may have all looked fine on the outside, but at the root, deep down beneath the pretty, lay a tangled mess. I allowed my God-given dreams and ambitions to be tainted by idolatry, the quest to please only myself.

Sometimes we rediscover something about ourselves we thought we’d “taken care of” a good long time ago. Sometimes we realize we’ve fallen victim to the same-old root rot problem again — the problem we thought we’d fixed, the problem we thought we’d already overcome.

Yet here it is, the unseemly underneath, exposed again. Kind of makes you want to chuck the whole thing in the trash can at the curb, roots and blooms and pot and all, doesn’t it?

It’s hard work, this beginning again, turning back, replanting and resowing. I’m not alway sure I’m up for it, to be quite honest. I feel like I should be further along on this spiritual journey by now, less inclined to succumb to the same old temptations, if that makes sense.

Yet I still come back to this, despite my frustration and dismay:

No matter how rotten our roots, no matter how dark and messy and gnarled and infested our hearts, Jesus doesn’t chuck us into the trash can at the curb, roots and blooms and pot and all. He gives us grace, again and again and again.

He graciously shows us the error of our ways; he gives us a glimpse into what lies beneath. He shines his light into our dark places, not so that we will recoil in shame, but so we can see his love, even there.

Jesus reminds us to turn once again from the work of our own hands. He redirects our gaze from the pretty, enticing blooms to the roots underneath that need tending and nurturing. And he reminds us that he is always with us, even there, even as we begin again.

Last month, as some of you might recall, I wrote about same-sex marriage, both here on the blog and for the monthly column I write for the local newspaper. The reaction to those two pieces was pretty fierce, and I’m not going to lie, it was tough and not much fun. Several people commented that I handled the contentious online dialogue with grace, but truth be told, that public conversation wasn’t the whole, complete picture. Behind the scenes, there was another conversation that unfolded privately in my email box, a conversation I handled with a distinct lack of grace and love.

On the morning the newspaper column published, my pastor emailed me with a bit of advice. Don’t engage in an argument, he advised. Instead, simply suggest that you both “agree to disagree in good Christian faith.”

Fifteen minutes later the first heated email popped into my in-box. I promptly ignored my pastor’s judicious advice.

Instead, over the next seven days, I engaged in battle. I launched Scripture like grenades at my “opponent,” and she launched back. I schemed throughout the night, staring at the ceiling, planning my next response, composing emails in my head. During the day I frantically flipped through my Bible and Googled key phrases in search of the perfect verses to use against my opponent’s arguments. When my husband walked in the door from work, I ranted and raved and fumed and cursed.

Somewhere along the line I realized that I wanted only one thing out of this exchange. I wanted to win; I wanted to be right. I wanted the final word. The conversation, if you can even call it that, had become my own personal crusade, my own Holy War, a war I was determined to win.

I wrote earlier this week that grace is always in the now, that God’s door is always open. I believe this. I believe that grace is an invitation, an open avenue to experiencing fully the God-with-us life. I believe that the invitation is always there, waiting, available to us.

BUT…here’s the key:

We have to walk through the open door. We have to say yes. We have to accept the invitation into grace. God doesn’t force his grace on us; he invites us. The opportunity to answer yes is all ours. 

The place I had boxed myself into in that angry email exchange was a cramped, small, lonely place; a place of fear and bitterness. God didn’t create that place, I created it. God was there, grace was there, in the now, even in that small space, but I didn’t acknowledge it. I didn’t accept the invitation to walk with God and the person on the other side of that email exchange into a bigger, more spacious place. I turned away from the invitation, away from God, and away from love and grace.

“The smallness you feel comes from within you,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians. “Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!”

Listen to what Paul tells us: We create the smallness; we live our lives in a small way. God doesn’t create that; he doesn’t want cramped, stifled smallness for us.

God created us in his image – to love, to create, to be bold, passionate, merciful, compassionate, sensitive; to live wide-open, not closed in…wide-open, exuberantly, with love and mercy and compassion.

God invites us through the tear in the temple curtain, into that open, spacious place, and it’s such a beautiful place. But in order to get there, we have to say yes; we have to accept the invitation to grace.

Those words from Paul to the Corinthians are some of my favorite in all of the Bible. The reason they speak so powerfully to me is because I have a propensity to box myself into a small, cramped place – a bitter, angry place, a self-righteous place. I choose that place time and time again, but it’s not the place God wants for me or for you.

After seven days of arguing about same-sex marriage via email, I finally took my pastor’s advice and suggested to my opponent that we “agree to disagree in good Christian faith.” It was the weakest, most pathetic “yes” to the invitation into grace ever.

Ever.

And truth be told, I offered that spindly twig of an olive branch simply to save myself and my own beleaguered spirit. I was done arguing; I was exhausted; I wanted out.

The miracle in this story is that God used that desiccated olive twig anyway. God met me exactly where I was with his grace, in the now.

He saw that twig, he knew it was the very best I could do, and he planted it into his soil. God grew that weak, pathetic pseudo-gift I’d reluctantly offered into something new.

It took me a while — seven whole days — but I’m so glad I finally answered yes (albeit a weak yes, but a yes nonetheless) to God’s invitation into grace.

And the person on the other side of that email exchange? She answered yes, too. She accepted my desiccated olive branch and added a leaf of her own. Our email exchange continued, each of us adding another and another leaf, the tone and content of our emails improving bit by bit, growing warmer and more amicable with each subsequent response.

My “enemy” and I, we answered yes to God’s invitation; we stepped into his grace. And let me tell you, it was a beautiful place, a place where we could breathe again — a spacious, wide-open place of freedom and lightness and peace.

Several years ago, back when I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in God, I went to see a pastor. Sitting across from him in his office (and believe me, there’s nothing more awkward than going to see a pastor you don’t know and who doesn’t know you, plunking into a folding chair and launching this conversation),  I told him, after much beating around the bush, that I didn’t think I believed in God.

It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud, although I’d felt that way, deep in my heart, for just about as long as I could remember. I sat in a chair across from a pastor I didn’t know and said out loud that I was afraid I didn’t believe in God and that I suspected I never really had.

That admission, and the words that pastor offered me in return, turned out to be a critical juncture in my spiritual journey, although I didn’t know it at the time and wouldn’t know it for a long time after that meeting.

I didn’t recognize grace in that moment, but the truth is, I was standing in the midst of it nonetheless.

That day Pastor Greg told me he believed not only that the Holy Spirit had brought me to his office, but also that the Holy Spirit was working in me, right that very minute. I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it. Spiritually, emotionally and even intellectually I could not wrap my head around that statement. It didn’t make sense, and in some ways it still doesn’t.

I mean, how is the Holy Spirit working in someone who doesn’t even think she believes in God? That’s crazy, right? It’s backwards and convoluted and upside-down. Yet at the same time, I don’t see any other possible explanation for it. The fact is, I was standing in grace, even in that moment, even when I didn’t know it or recognize it, even in the midst of my unbelief.

You don’t need to take my word for it; take God’s word instead. Listen to what Paul tells the Romans:

We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory… (Romans 5:2, Msg.)

The door into God’s love and grace is always open, already open. We think we open the door to him, but it doesn’t work that way at all because his door is already open to us…and it’s been open all along.

“Never confuse the perception of yourself with the mystery that you are accepted,” says Brennan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel. It’s a complete and utter mystery, isn’t it? That God accepts us exactly as we are, without a single self-improvement, no matter our deepest flaws, no matter our most egregious mistakes, no matter our darkest secrets. He accepts us. He loves us. He stands with us.

So here’s my question for you: how do you perceive yourself?

Because no matter how you perceive yourself, no matter how you fill in the blank, no matter how you answer that question  — I am a failure … I am a bad mother … I am a screw-up … I am a liar … I am a cheater … I am an addict … I am an unbeliever  — don’t confuse that with this fact:

God loves you. God accepts you. You are standing in his grace. Don’t confuse your perception with this mystery of his grace. Your perception is flawed. God’s grace is Truth.

Friends, give yourself a beautiful gift today. Sit with Paul’s words to the Romans and read them as yours. Because those words are indeed for you. The door is wide-open. God has flung his door wide-open. You are already standing where you’d always hoped to stand.

Grace is not for later, for tomorrow, for when we are improved, transformed, better, nicer, less flawed. Grace is not for when…then.

Grace is for now.

Let’s accept the gift God lavishes on us. Let’s accept the gift God yearns for us to embrace. Let’s accept the gift of his ever-present, always-available, wide-open grace.