Modern Grace

And I get where the insistence on grace comes from! I am sympathetic to the truth that there is nothing I, as the tyrant of my life, can do. I agree and know and cheer and salute! that if I am to receive charity, it is an absolutely fundamental step to admit helplessness. I know the strange peace to finally quit bailing water and sink to the bottom; to stop! to hand the one who steps out of the whirlwind the leash of Leviathan. But there is a great misunderstanding at this place. It is the same misunderstanding Nietzsche had from the moment he found Nihilism until he went insane. The same misunderstanding Job had from the second he started suffering to the instant he clapped his hands to his mouth. The same misunderstanding Jonah had from the day he fled God’s voice to the day he lifted his eyes to the hills. The same misunderstanding every man has on the Godless side of the abyss of his salvation; who will stand at the edge and look down into the valley of the shadow of death he just discovered; who will quietly sing the poem of the depths of God’s love, but who will not walk through it . The misunderstanding is always the same, and it is always this—from Adam to now: that to relent control is to stop living! when it is actually to begin! That to finally give control to God is to lose control of your life! when it is finally the moment you gain it!
The great power of God is to start living. It is not to hand him the wheel and then, in relief, read a book or stare at a phone or take a nap in the passenger seat. It is not to hand him the wheel and immediately do whatever I want—even if my wants are
much less and much better than they were before my helplessness!
Rather, it is to know Him in me and myself in Him! that I may watch him closely and learn; that I may see how he controls the Leviathan hiding in the bush; that I may walk beside him. And as soon as I can, sit down in my father’s seat, place my hands on the wheel, listen as closely as possible to his voice, then do just as he says and live.