The invitation came as a complete surprise through a Facebook message. A few days earlier I let a mission-mentor-friend know that I was home after a visit to Wana Wa Mola in Mombasa, Kenya. My mentor-friend helped arrange my initial exploratory visit to East Africa some four years earlier. A few days later he responded and asked a very simple question. Did I want to attend the 62nd annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D. C.? The possibility, let alone the likelihood, had never crossed my mind, not even in my wildest dreams! “Yes.”
First organized in Washington, D. C. in 1942 by the members of Congress, members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives gather weekly for a time of food, fellowship and prayer. Politics is left at the door. Members, regardless of party or voting record, or region of the country, encourage, support and pray for one another. And then, each February since 1952, they host the National Prayer Breakfast which brings 3000 representatives from around the world together at the International Ballroom of the Hilton Washington. Every President since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended the breakfast, and every President has spoken about the importance of prayer in his life.
This year’s hosts—Representatives Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Janice Han (D-California) set the tone and the mood early. Positioned at opposite ends of the political spectrum with seemingly little if anything in common, they displayed the good natured banter and kidding that comes from deep friendship and mutual respect. The thing that united them–and everyone who sat on the platform, regardless of their spiritual background–was Jesus; the Christ to Christians, a major prophet to Muslims, and honored by people of all faiths. And indeed, all faiths were represented at this breakfast.
Flying from Washington, I mulled over my experiences. I dined with people whose faith stories were far greater than mine. I shared a bagel with a man from Nepal, passed a pat of butter to a Native American social worker from Minnesota, joked with a diplomat from Great Britain, learned about how a major cookie manufacturer met his wife, marveled at the energy of an ER doctor who also provided foster care for difficult teenage boys, and listened to a college student from Kosovo talk about his homeland. I was waaay out of my league. But then, isn’t that a definition of “grace”? Being out of your league? Not being deserving? Grace isn’t something that we’ve earned. Nor is it something that we can buy or make. Grace isn’t about us. It’s about the One who gives. It is a gift, a true gift with no strings attached.
It didn’t take an invitation to a National Prayer Breakfast to make me aware of grace, but it did remind me how “grace-full” I am. How truly “lucky” I am. Grace touches me every day; as I open my eyes in the morning of a new day, when a grandson runs to me as I pick him up from school, or another one calls to tell me that he got his first base hit. Grace hangs on my refrigerator door in the illegible handwritten notes and cards sent by my granddaughters. It sits on my desk in a calendar sprinkled with family pictures from the past year. I experience it on Sunday mornings when a child wanders into my office for a cookie or a neighbor invites me over for a Downton Abbey dinner party knowing that I’m not a fan but that I would be eating alone that evening. It touches me through the touch of a spouse who loves me even when I’m not the least bit lovable, and the friend who drove me home from an emergency room at 3 in the morning when no one else was around.
Ol’ John Newton got it right. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
Glimpse of Grace While Waiting for a Delayed Flight
As I write this I am sitting in an airport terminal waiting for my next flight. Our departure is delayed because of late arrivals due to weather conditions and, I am sure, other complications of which I am not aware. These delays can drive us crazy.
We are not a society that likes to wait. The Disney parks have “fast tracks” for we who are impatient. Grocery stores have “express lanes” for shoppers with a limited number of items. Expressways have “express lanes” for people with a certain number of passengers. Toll booths have “X-Press” booths for those of us with “I-Passes.
While I am as impatient as the best of them, I try to use these delays as a form of “spiritual discipline.” “Wait for the LORD,” the Psalmist advised (27:14). I remember reading a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor in which that eloquent old preacher said that the good Lord may not show up when you expect, “but He’s never late.”
So, I try to relax as I wait, watching people rush to their various gates and reflecting upon what glimpse of grace God has in store for me next!
A Glimpse of Grace in a Nighttime Snowfall
A gentle snow is falling tonight in my part of the world. It is a shoveler’s delight and a child’s disappointment. Light and fluffy, it is easy shoveling but difficult, if not impossible, to pack into a snowman or a snowball. Before the night is over weather forecasters say we’ll have accumulated four to six inches.
At night you can only see the falling snow as it passes through the beam of a nearby streetlamp. But, if you stand outside, you can feel it strike and melt upon your face. You can see it cover the lapels of your coat and feel it go down you neck. Inside the house I take off my stocking cap. It is covered with rapidly melting snow.
Sitting by my window I see it slowly cover the ground hiding a discarded bottle here, a blowing discarded wrapper there. Slowly the world is transformed. It becomes “clean”, “pure”, blanketed in white. Earlier, while I shoveled my sidewalk, I thought about something the prophet Isaiah said. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (1:18, my emphasis)
A winter’s night. A gentle snowfall. A glimpse of grace. Amazing, eh?
Glimpse of Grace in a Cemetery
As a minister I am frequently in cemeteries. When officiating at a graveside service I usually arrive a early enough to wander around and read the various markers. Rather than finding this to be depressing, I find the experience to be strangely comforting. For me, it’s a good “reality check.” Here are a few lessons that I take from these walks.
Lesson One: From dust you come, unto dust you shall return. (Genesis 3: 19) The story my be apocryphal but I once read that the late Charles DeGaulle and his wife had a special needs child. As was often the case in the 1950s, the child died at an early age. On the way from the church to the cemetery DeGaulle and his wife sat in silence in the back of the limousine. As they turned into the cemetery lane DeGaulle’s wife broke the silence and saying that she wished that their little one could have been like everyone else, meaning “normal.” DeGaulle didn’t respond at first. He continued to look out the window, staring at the markers they passed on the way to the final resting place for this precious child of theirs. When the limousine stopped DeGualle, still looking out the window with a far away look in his eyes said, “Well, now she is. Now she is like everyone else.” In the end, we are all alike. We are all special. We are all precious in the sight of God..
Lesson Two: I find mausoleums depressing. I have been in some beautiful mausoleums over the years but I have also seen many that have outlived their endowment. They leak and crumble and be a shadow of their former self.
Ultimately, everything that we build crumbles. Jesus got crossways with religious authorities in Jerusalem when he reminded them that the Temple of which they were so proud would one day be nothing more than a pile of ruble. Even without the intervention of the Romans, this would have been true. Nothing we build lasts forever. The grandest cathedrals become naked skeletons and then a pile of stones. The things of this world are not permanent. The sooner we learn this, the better off we will be.
Lesson Three: Sooner or later we are faint shadows in history. The day will come when no one will remember us.
About a year ago I walked through an old cemetery adjacent to a small rural congregation I first served. At the highest point of the cemetery there is marker that rises above all of the other markers. It stands there majestically like the Washington Monument rises into the D. C. skyline. The person buried beneath the marker died in the 1830s. I recalled as a young minister still being able to read the name, the date of birth and the date of death as well as a verse or two of Scripture etched on the stone. But when I visited this cemetery this time, all of that was gone. The winds and rain and lichen had taken its toll. Whoever was buried beneath the stone was no longer legible.
So it will be for us. I know only a couple of stories of my paternal great grandfather and fewer still of his father. That’s about as far back as my family legacy goes. I can’t even go back three generations with my maternal grandparents. Only a handful of people are remembered a thousand years after they completed this part of life. Why do we think that it will be any different for us?
The wisdom of my faith reminds me not to worry so much about the future or try to hold on to past memories. Instead, I am called to live, as best as I can, in the present. That is hard for me because I am a bit of a dreamer and a romantic. But the present is really all that I have. It is all that you have, too. Everything else is ethereal, imaginary, not really real. But the Present, now that is something else. That’s what it is called the Precious Present!
So, let’s not take ourselves so damn seriously. Lighten up. And don’t worry so much about making memories for others. Trust me, they will have their own memories of us. Love, laugh, cry, feel, enjoy this thing called life. If you can do this, you will not only see but you will be a glimpse of grace.
Glimpse of Grace from a Cracked Chalice
I have a wooden cracked chalice in my office. It was a gift given to my wife and I by a parishioner on Easter morning in 2001. The craftsman who made dated the bottom of the chalice and signed his name.
It wasn’t cracked when he gave it to us but within a few months, the chalice dried out and cracked. When the master woodworker saw it he was embarrassed. He wanted to make us a replacement but we said no. We rather liked the cracked chalice. One day he snuck into my office, where it had taken up residence and added a bit of humor to the chalice. Over the crack he placed a butterfly bandaid! I liked the added touch and never removed it. The chalice still sits on my shelf. I still like it.
God likes broken things. More than that, God is connected to the broken in a very special way. In the 147th Psalm we are told that God mends “the brokenhearted.” The old prophet Isaiah announced that the Spirit of the LORD was upon him because God anointed him “to bring good news to the poor” and “to bind up the wounds of brokenhearted.”
The Almighty uses broken things to reveal the divine glory. Soil is broken so that seed can be planted. Grain cracked before it is made into bread. Grapes are crushed before they are made into wine. And the One whom Christians call “Lord” and “Savior” was broken to take away the sin of the world. Cracked grain. Crushed grapes. Bread and Fruit of the Vine. The Risen Lord. Body and the Blood, broken and shed for you and for me. A glimpse of grace. 
Glimpses of Grace from Looking at Clouds
When I was seven or eight years old I would often lay outside in my back yard on warm summer days with the two little neighbor girls, Nancy and Carol. We would spend what seemed like hours looking at the white puffy clouds floating by overhead. And we would see things; little hunched down rabbits and Jack and the Beanstalks’ giant, floating dragons and sleeping old men with long white beards. We could almost hear them snore if we listened really hard.
Sometimes we had to point out what we saw to each other because we weren’t always looking in the same place or at the same angle. Often, as we tried to point something out, the images would be transformed from something kind and gentle into something frightening and horrid. We thought that this was magic of some kind, or maybe God drawing pictures in the sky. Maybe it was the Almighty’s way of speaking to us. None of us had ever heard God speak, of course, but maybe, we thought, He spoke to us in the clouds.
As I grew older I knew that “our” clouds were actually “cumulus” clouds and nothing more than collections of water droplets. The name cumulus came from a Latin word that means “heap.” Those particular clouds were a sign of fair weather. I also learned about air currents, and how they moved clouds across the sky. There was nothing magical about the cloud transformations. It was simple science.
But God, well now, that was and is another matter all together. As I have grown older I have become convinced that God speaks to us, more often then not, through the circumstances and events of our lives. Often we don’t understand what is being said at the time but there are occasional times when we recognize what He is saying. And, in my childlike moments when all things are possible, I still hold on to the belief that God spoke to me in those clouds of long ago. The Almighty graced me with a glimpse or two.
One glimpse, one insight, is that a lot in life depends upon our perspective. Often we don’t understand something or someone or see things exactly the same way as someone else does because of our perspectives are different, born out of different circumstances and experiences. This does not mean that one of us has to be right and the other wrong. It does mean, though, that we have a lot to learn from each other.
The other glimpse is the relentlessness of change. As the clouds changed their shapes because of winds in the atmosphere, we too find that the world has changed due to the winds of time. We constantly change our minds about certain things in light of new information, circumstances, situations and events. I pity the person who is afraid to change their mind about something. Survival is born of constant change. Those who either cannot or will not change are doomed to extinction.
Glimpse of Grace–What if God’s Plans for Me Are Not My Plans for Me?!
I have been haunted by a question, a possibility, an insight over the past few weeks. It was something Jefferson Bethke wrote in a book I received this past Christmas, Jesus >Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, ding More, and Being Good Enough (Nelson Books, c. 2013). In a section entitled “Not Your Mom’s Jesus” Bethke noted that when he was in Sunday School and attending Christian summer camps the counselors often tried to encourage the campers with two well known Scripture verses. The first was Isaiah 40:31—“Those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength; they shall mount of with wings like eagles.” It is an inspiring verse. It is the basis of a beloved hymn often sung, in my experience, at funerals. I once used it in a prayer when I briefly coached a soccer team at a small midwestern college. They played their best game of the season but still got killed! If you do a Google search of Isaiah 40:31 you will find you can buy it engraved on rings and bracelets, printed on tee shirts and embossed on coffee cups. All very nice, I’m sure, though a few seemed to be a bit gaudy for my tastes.
The other verse was a personal favorite, Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” This passage has comforted myself and others during times of challenge and hardship. I even wrote it on notes to people when I didn’t know what else to say but wanted to express my sympathy or support.
Bethke turned this “personal comfort” on its head when he asked a very simple but profound question. What if iGod’s plans for me are not the same as my plans for me! Ouch! Check please!
Every since I read that I’ve been haunted by how I have attempted to “get” God’s blessings on my plans and my agenda while never once considering the possibility that those very plans may, in fact, be contrary to God’s plans for me. Believe me, this is a troubling thought! This very real possibility has caused me to reconsider many of my preconceived notions. It has shed a new light on my worldview.
Although—as I have often said to others, given my age—I have more of a history than a future, it’s not too late for me to learn a new trick or two—after all I am not a dog. Nor is it too late for me to make a course correction in my life. As a matter of fact, I am in the process of doing this exact thing. It is not too late for you, either. Maybe both of us—you who are reading this blog and me, have just discovered a glimpse of grace.
A Glimpse of Grace from a Frozen Water Pipe!
It has been an usually cold winter this year due to an arctic vortex that has taken a liking to the eastern half of the United States. As a consequence, our high temperatures this winter have frequently hovered in the single digits, Fahrenheit. Wind chills, which are “cold temperatures with a press agent”, have plummeted into double digits below zero, Fahrenheit.
Early one morning my wife went into the bathroom after a particularly cold night of howling winds and turned on a faucet to the sink. Nothing came out. Not even air. She tried again. Still nothing. She called to me and I tried a different bathroom faucet with no more luck than she had. In all of my years, this had never happened to me before.
The first thought that crossed my mind was that the problem had to be with our reverse osmosis water system. I vaguely remembered when it was installed I asking the service representative how I would know when it was time to change the filters. He told that that was easy. We would know because the water would simply quite coming out of our faucets. So, I thought to myself, no water=change filters.
Off to a You Tube tutorial to learn how to change the water filters. I changed the two filters with a minimum amount of mess. Tried the faucets. Still no water! Damn! What next? You may have guessed it, call a plumber.
I have an very good relationship my local plumber because I learned long ago that there are two ways I can fix something. I can fix it and then call “The Man” to fix it OR, I can simply call “The Man” and simple save myself a lot of aggravation. I’ve call my “plumber Man” so often that we’re on not only a name basis but a nicknamed basis!
When he arrived the plumber checked things out, confirmed that I had installed the reverse osmosis filters correctly and diagnosed the problem as a frozen water pipe. “Impossible,” I thought. I’ve never had a frozen water pipe in my entire life! But, as he followed the various water lines it seemed that I indeed did have a frozen water pipe.
He cut a hole in our drywall about four inches from the ceiling to expose the troubled pipe. It was frozen! You could see the frost around it. As he worked on the problem I asked him how this could have happened as the house was more than sixty years old and there was no evidence of this kind of problem happening before now. Surely over the years, I reasoned, the house had seen winters just as cold as this one AND without the benefit of central heat.
“Have you had work done down here recently?” he asked. I thought a bit and then remembered that we had a baseboard dewatering system put in last summer. “I suspect,” he concluded, “that the new drywall is more insulated than the old drywall was. The water pipe was sealed off from internal air circulation that would have offset the outside temperature.”
It all made perfect and maddening sense. Once again, an example of unintended consequences. Fix one problem and create a new one! Isolated and self-contained the water pipe froze—and I might add, broke—for the first time in the life of the house!
After the plumber left I bought a cold air register vent to cover the hole in my drywall. I wanted to ensure circulation of air and save a little money. As I screwed the vent into place a thought crossed my mind. The water pipe was a parable about us. When we are sealed off from one another, isolated and insulated in our own little worlds with our own little concerns, we can become cold inside. The movement of God’s spirit within us slowly hardens until we find ourselves “frozen.”
We were made for each other, to be in community, to be part of something greater than ourselves. Happiness, true happiness, is found not in having but in giving ourselves away. And that, my friends, is a glimpse of grace.
Gimpses of grace from a dopp kit
Upon returning from a recent overnight trip I opened my dopp kit only to discover that a travel bottle of shampoo leaked all over one section of the kit. The leak left a slippery mess for me to clean up. Half disgusted with myself, I groaned as I dumped everything into the bathroom sink to rinse, leaving behind a sink full of shampoo suds. Then I rinsed out the kit itself, turned it over in the bathtub to drain and dry overnight. The next morning I picked it up and to my momentary horror discovered that the tub had two dark parallel lines, stains from where the wet leather made contact with the pristine white of the tub. I wiped out the contaminated section of the dopp kit with a hand towel and put everything away.
About a week later I took the kit out for another overnight trip. As soon as I opened it, the distinctive sweet clean smell of baby shampoo—okay, you caught me—floated through the air. Holding the kit in my left hand, I pulled back the shower curtain with my right and glanced down at the still stained, though slightly faded–thanks to Soft-Scrub, elbow grease and daily showers—tub as something dawned on me.
How many times have we made a mess of things or got hit by one of life’s spills, perhaps through no fault—or minimum fault—of our own? More times than not, we try our best to clean up the mess but residual stains always seem to remain. Something else also remains; the sweet clean God’s grace that surprises us at the most unexpected moments.
Glimpse of Grace and a Piece of Toast
Because of his parents’ work schedule, my five-year old grandson comes to my house for breakfast on just about every school day. Usually I am scurrying around when he arrives but one day I was more prepared than usual. As his usual arrival time approached, the bread in the toaster for his “go-to” breakfast of buttered toast. The butter had been set out long enough to be spread-ably soft. Then I sat in a chair strategically placed by the window and waited for his mom to careen into the driveway with her minivan! I waited, and I waited and I waited. Finally, I called his mom. “We’re running late,” she breathlessly explained. “I’m trying to get everyone buckled in. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I walked to the kitchen disappointed. This just wouldn’t do, I thought to myself. Toast is such a small thing but for me to be ready in advance advance of anything–all prepared, ready to go–that was a big thing! I took the toast out of the toaster. It was already hard and crusty. No amount of butter would soften it up! It was nothing more than a big crouton!
It’s funny where you mind takes you sometimes. The queerest thoughts often pop into it. As I buttered this crouton-that-once-was-toast I resigned myself to the fact that I’d make another piece of toast for my grandson when he arrived and would once again be “Pop the Unprepared!” And then, a glimpse of grace; a “prayerful word” that I received years ago wandered into my thoughts. One simple word. “Patience.” Originally the word came out of the blue to me during my morning devotions, but patience is not something that I am good at practicing. When I want something I want it now. I don’t like to wait. If I could, I’d “fast-pass” all of life’s rides not just those at a Disney theme park! But that is not how life works, is it?
“Wait for the LORD,” the Psalmist wrote. “Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.” (27:14) So I waited. And then I made another piece of toast. Each day I must remind myself to learn how to wait, to be strong and to have courage.
Glimpse of Grace 