Saying Grace

Someone has said that the final act of grace in the life of a believer is to make one gracious. I believe that.

Gratitude is about as close as we humans ever get to pure grace. Indeed, the word “gratitude” or “thanksgiving” (eucharisto in Greek) derives from the same root as the word “grace” (charis). To this day, when you say “thank you” in Greek, you say “grace,” literally – eucharisto.

I preached a sermon series earlier in the fall titled Ancient Words, Amazing Stories. In one of the sermons I alluded to the 1991 Lawrence Kasdan film Grand Canyon. It’s a powerful story about grace and gratitude and their creative power to transform lives. In the sermon, I told about how an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles on his way home from a Lakers game gets lost in a rough part of town. When his expensive car breaks down, a gang of young thugs with nothing to lose stop and threaten to waste him right there in his stalled car. Just before it turns ugly, a tow truck driver arrives, hooks up the man’s car, and with the thugs still brandishing guns, drives off with the lawyer in his cab. Saves his life. The lawyer can’t stop thinking about it. Haunted by grace, he calls the tow truck driver, arranges to meet him for breakfast, and over eggs, toast, and coffee tells him his story.

“One morning,” he says, “I was on my way to a meeting in the Mutual Benefit Building on Wilshire, the Miracle Mile. I love that name, the Miracle Mile. I was thinking about the meeting I was going to, worried about it actually. I started to step off the curb and a stranger grabbed me and yanked me back. A city bus went flying by my nose. I mean it just filled up the world, six inches from my nose. I would have been like a wet bug stain on the front of the bus. I wouldn’t have even felt it, it would have been over so fast. I thanked this stranger, this woman in a baseball cap, but I was pretty much in a daze. When I thanked her, she said, ‘My pleasure.’ Not 'you're welcome,' but 'my pleasure.' I never got over the feeling of the sheer grace of that moment. I mean, she reached out and yanked me back from the edge, literally, changed everything for me, my wife, my son, and then she just wandered off down the Miracle Mile. I just couldn’t let it happen again. I didn’t want to let you drift away like she did. It didn’t seem right to let it happen twice. So that’s why I’m bothering you.”

As the story develops, the two become friends, and the lawyer, through an act of grace, is able to make a difference in the tow truck driver’s life too. Two families, forever different, their lives taking a different course, all because someone found the grace to say “thank you.”

Something to think about as we celebrate "Giving Thanks Day" this week.

By the way, if I haven't said it yet...

Thank you,

wayne

Through the Wardrobe with C. S. Lewis

A lot of people got their first introduction to C. S. Lewis a few years ago when their kids dragged them to see the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The film was based on the first of seven books penned by Lewis in a children’s series called The Chronicles of Narnia. In the story four children travel through a magical wardrobe to emerge in the strange and mystical land of Narnia where animals speak and the world is locked in a perpetual Christmas-less winter while awaiting Spring that seems destined never to come.

My own introduction to Lewis, however, goes back to my college days in the 70’s when I studied English. A professor, knowing I was headed to seminary, suggested that I read Lewis as a model for the minister’s primary task of helping people to make sense of faith in their day-to-day lives. I devoured his writings voraciously, and he became for me a conversation partner with whom to discuss the “big issues.” Lewis’ writings have not only stood the test of time, but he himself has become for me, save Jesus of Nazareth, the single most important theological influence on my life.

And I’m not alone in this. This Oxford and Cambridge professor, though he died in 1963, continues to be for many a significant voice well into the 21st century. His writings are more popular now than they were when he was alive. His non-fiction writings are for the most part all apologetic in character; that is, they are aimed at making Christianity credible to a thinking public. The most popular among them, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Four Loves, continue to draw countless readers into a conversation about life, faith, what it means to believe in God, and what it means to be a “mere Christian.”

Why is Lewis so popular among serious persons who want to think deeply about the “big issues” of life? Well, those who have found Lewis to be a reliable guide into these subjects will have to answer for themselves, but my own experience with Lewis points up three things that he just does better than anyone else.

First, he may have the finest mind I’ve ever encountered. His commitment to careful and correct thinking (logic) is relentless and unremitting. He will not abide sloppy thinking, and he will anticipate and expose it wherever he finds it. That is to say, if you’re not “into thinking,” don’t read Lewis. If, on the other hand, you want carefully argued reasons for believing what you believe, Lewis will gladly guide you.

Second, Lewis has an uncanny knack for knowing just the right example, model, or illustration to help you understand what appears at first sight to be a hopelessly complex idea. For example, in explaining how salvation is both God’s gift to us and our work to do, Lewis quips, “God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.” Then, he goes on to say that every parent joyously celebrates their baby’s first stumbling efforts in learning to walk. But that same parent will never be satisfied until their child can stride confidently across the room. In the same way, he says, God welcomes our most meager stumbling efforts to be the persons he created us to be, but will never be satisfied until we in fact become the persons he created us to be. It's such a simple, elegant, and disarming illustration that Lewis leaves you muttering to yourself, "Of course, of course!"

Finally, Lewis is a passionate writer. He believes what he’s saying, and it comes through. Agree with him, or disagree with him, but you will not read Lewis with indifference. He draws you in with careful reasoning and homey illustrations, and then, before you realize what’s happened, you’re hooked. That passion is in the service of his belief that God has really broken in and broken through to our world and revealed himself to us. That not everyone is aware of it is more a function of our closed-off, two-dimensional thinking than the credibility of God’s self-revelation. But for those who have the courage to “part the wardrobe,” a mystical and magical world awaits through which Lewis is all too happy to act as guide.

Update

I've received numerous messages from many of you expressing concern and care for me regarding my last blog. Thank you! I am grateful beyond words (which in itself is saying something for me!) for your expressions of concern and especially for your prayers in my behalf.

A quick update. I am continuing to make steady improvement, and my symptoms are abating slowly, for which I continue to be grateful. It appears now that my condition was precipitated from some kind of toxic exposure, to what we don't know and may never know. The good news is that my immune system is working and the toxins (along with the symptoms they produced) are slowly disappearing. There appears to have been no permanent damage done.

Again, thank you for your expressions of concern and please continue to keep me in your prayers. I am

His and yours,

wayne