Chapter 35 To Really Feel and Know This Grace

This life is messy, no doubt, because of the likes of me and my selfishness; my sin, my attention to these personal wants and needs, this flesh, and perhaps my judgment or loathing of this or that.

Each day of this life blends into a repetitious pattern of weeks and months, on into a year, and in my attempts to curtail this behavior, I imagine my existence as a small loaf of hard crusted bread. I leave crumbs behind as I bite into it, or as I break off a piece; I try to be neat about it, but it’s just impossible, really. As I self consciously work my way to the soft, warm middle, right there on the table with its starched white tablecloth, there are hundreds of tiny reminders of something that was once whole, stark evidence that reveals the mess that I am; my proper table manners once again failing to conceal a beast who cannot be tamed.

And I look at others and the spaces around their plates to see if they’re doing a better job with it; if they have respectable habits at the table, more couth and a certain sophistication.

It’s shameful, really, to leave such a mess on this white tablecloth of my own design, so I want give it over to him, all of it: my crumbs, my messiness, my incapacity to keep tidy and clean about it. I want to bring it to him, my crusty bread, in two hands, reaching out to him, asking once again if he’ll take it and do something with it. You know, use it or put it back together or explain to me why I can never cut or break off a piece cleanly.

And, of course, I know he will. But I’m slow to believe it.

So, I need to actually see him receiving it, taking it from me, and maybe you do too; to really feel and know this grace from the One who gives it, the very One who rides in so nonchalantly and yet full of purpose. If it helps you, then imagine it with me. Close your eyes and shut out the outside noise of it all. Listen instead to something else, for just beyond us is a distant thunder that is approaching; not in divided claps, but deep and steady within the confines of a low rumble.

And when you hear it and you begin to feel it, well, that just makes it all the more actual, because sound and vibration have a way of heralding arrival to these senses; and the flutter on our skin and the uneasy tension in the air halts our breath before he is revealed.

Maybe you sense the crumbs are falling through the spaces of your fingers, just like mine, because I’m holding on tightly, trying to keep it all together, what’s left of it, so that I have something for him to hold of me, to explain, to understand of this inability to fix myself. I squeeze a little too hard in anticipation and more crumbs fall. I feel them hitting my feet and crashing to the ground, loudly, clanging, even these feathered pieces of crust. This necktie, so colorful, masking and tidying me with its rules and regulations, well, it’s just too tight. I can hardly breathe.

We're at a wedding reception.

The wind whips up a gentle, warm presence to insinuate what is unseen is ever true, and warming soil and distant flowerings fill and expand this want of smell. The doors of the reception hall have flown open, billowing curtains and sunlight falling into each other, beckoning the spring to take its rightful place on the fleeing shadow of this long winter’s night.

I open my eyes as he walks in and he sees me holding my brokenness right there in my very own grip, and so he takes the bread with one hand and with the other he guides my own hand to his side, and then this Rider lifts his left shoulder a little to expose his skin and well, there it is again, right where he was broken and pierced, and he tells me not to be shy, that I can touch it and run my fingers through it again and again, without feeling like I’m invading his space. And so I do, like I did that time on the back of his Harley, but this time my crumb filled fingers are on his flesh. And then he takes my small loaf of bread and he breaks it with a smile, because it is done. It is finished, once and for all.

I take my hand off, a little confused, as he says, “Let’s have a party.” He holds up my bread like an offering and maybe it is, and he does a little dance, a jig really; he wants to celebrate because I didn’t hide away this leavened scrap of dough.

Right about then I start looking around me and people are emerging from their tables, the shadows, the corners, the backyards and hidden places; there you are too, and we’re the church and we're all holding bread in both hands, the very crusty kind, walking toward him as pieces fall; white tablecloths begin to reveal crumbs everywhere and they’re on the floor too but it doesn’t matter because the One who should be most concerned about our mess is dancing, right there in the middle of it all, laughing, swinging this one and another around in His arms, and it’s really quite a beautiful scene. He beat this thing quite some time ago, for me and for you, so he's more inclined to get right to the party when we surrender it to him. He's always on the verge of celebrating and I keep forgetting that. So, I stomp on a glass just because I can, just because it fits the mood, and I’ve always wanted to. It shatters and he smiles at me.

The orchestra starts in full swing now, but underneath it all, I hear a cello and it’s low and gentle, muffled like the engine of his ride as it idles.

And I suppose that's just how I really feel and know this grace from the One who gives it.