Struck by Grace

February 28, 2013

I could not have said it better than this…why reinvent the wheel?

Do you know what it means to be struck by Grace?

…We cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by that stroke of grace. It happens or it doesn’t. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Graces strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longing-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Sometimes at that moment as a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better people than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religion or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

It is such moments that make us love our life, that make us accept ourselves. Not in our goodness and self complacency, but in the uncertainty of the external meaning of our life. We cannot force ourselves to accept ourselves. We cannot compel anyone to accept him/herself. But sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say “yes” to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate and self-contempt disappears, and that our self is reunited with itself. Then we can say that grace has come upon us.

Paul Tillich

The Shaking of the Foundation