THREADS OF GRACE

Our lives are made up of stories, countless stories, hundreds of thousands of them. The older we get, the more stories we have to tell. Most of them are truly mundane and quite uninteresting even to the main actor in that story: our self. Even the minutest detail in our life is a story. I always kid our youngest daughter, Tracy, because when Tracy tells a story, she tells a story. When she lived at home, it would take her five minutes to tell us that someone was at the front door.

Yes, that is a slight exaggeration, but not by much. The point is that there is a story behind every decision we make, every move we take. We do not make that decision out of the clear blue sky. We do not make that move, take that step, however short or long it is, without something preceding it; and, whether we realize it or not, whether we are cognizant of it or not, that something entails a story.

We are a people of the story. Whenever we gather, however small or large that gathering, whether at a family dinner, a Sunday worship, a class in school, at work, at play or at the local coffee shop for a chat with a friend, we each bring our personal stories with us and make that gathering into a larger story. The truth is that were we more aware of that truth, perhaps there would be less conflict and more cooperation in this world. For the further truth is that in one way or another we all have similar stories to tell. Only the names and places and circumstances are changed, but not the basic story.

That basic story is about a life lived with ups and downs, joys and sorrows, wins and losses. No one is exempt and no one is immune. It does us no good to complain that others have it better than we do because we have it better than others. And, yes, some people seem to suffer more than others and others seem to be more blessed than others. But we never know.

The only life we truly know about is our own, and often we do not truly know much about that life. Why? A simple answer is to say that we tend to go from one story to the next without much reflection on that last story. Yet it is only when we take the time to think about our life and the stories we have to tell that we can come to grips with what our life is all about and where we should be going next.

What we will discover in the process is that what has held us together when we thought our world was falling apart, what has kept us moving when we wanted to shrivel up and hide, have been those threads of grace that has kept us together, God’s grace and the grace that comes from those who are walking this journey of life with us. That said, it is also true that the many blessings of life that have come our way are more because God’s grace has been present and not because we have been someone special. Often we are unaware of those threads; but when we take the time to reflect on our life’s story, they become quite evident.

The tapestry of life – our personal life, the lives of those around us, the life of the world –is, if you will, woven together by those threads of God’s grace.

IT IS ABOUT ME

Each one of us has an ego whether we are willing to admit it or not. We are all selfish. That’s the way we were created. We came out of the womb thinking we were Number One, that the self always comes first. That belief was reinforced during our infancy when our every whim and need was attended to and as quickly as possible but certainly not as quickly as we felt we deserved.

All that notwithstanding, the truth is that when are we involved in something, whatever that something is, it is about us. It is about us, about me, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is essential that we realize that what is happening is about us and we must somehow in some way respond.

What we also have to realize is that it is also more than just about us. It is about everyone else as well. And sometimes, perhaps more often that we realize and certainly more often than we are willing to admit, it is more about others than it is about us. It is really and truly about them. Their problem, their issue, becomes our issue because we are now aware of it.

That is especially true when it comes to the living out of our faith, which, of course is to be done 24/7, every minute of every hour of every day. Every second of our life we are called through our baptism – and the promises made for us when we were baptized and which we renew each year – to seek and see and serve Jesus Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. In other words, it is as much about our neighbor, whoever that neighbor is and wherever that neighbor lives, as it is about me, whatever that “it” is at the moment.

As baptized Christians we promise to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. Not some. Not just those we love, but each and every one of them. Again, it is all about them as much as it is all about us. But in order for it to be all about them/him/her, it also has to be all about us/me first. Each one of us is vitally important in doing God’s work in resisting evil and in proclaiming the Good News. We cannot do any or all of that if we do not realize just how important we are, each one of us, in God’s grand scheme.

It is all about me because if I fail, others are hurt. If we fail, many are hurt. Yes, too many people – and sometimes we are one of them – lose sight of this truth and think that they are more important than others, that the world or at least their corner of the world, no matter how small that corner is, revolves about them and is only about them. It does not, never did and never will.

When we finally allow our ego to take back seat, or at least step aside for a moment, it is humbling to realize just how important we are in God’s ordering of creation. It is even more humbling to admit that we are not as important as we sometimes think we are. It is about us; but in being about us, it is also about how we full the responsibilities God has entrusted to us.