Chaplain’s Corner: Amazing Grace

I have always loved how the Bible informs us of its heroes’ shortcomings right alongside their heroic feats without batting an eye. I was reminded of this again as we have worked our way through the story of Moses in our weekly Chats with the Chaplain. When Moses stumbles upon the burning bush he is watching over sheep for his father-in-law. Why? Because fourteen verses earlier he fled for his life after he had killed a man! Certainly, if anyone should ever be disqualified from leading God’s chosen people, it should be Moses.

This is not an isolated incident. God works like this all the time. Jacob cheated his brother out of his inheritance. Peter denied Jesus. Paul’s first line of work was killing Christians. God sees the potential in people long after society and even the individuals themselves stop seeing it.

We are our own worst enemy in this regard. We keep a tally of all the small ways we have fallen short, counting ourselves out of the running for qualifying as “worthy,” and spending anxious nights staring at the ceiling, wondering if perhaps our best wasn’t good enough for God after all.

Grace is a difficult concept to grasp. It takes faith to believe that God could see something that we can’t. To believe that however much we fall short by, God can make up the difference. Kathleen Norris writes that “God loves to look at us, and loves it when we will look back at him.” How beautifully simple the love of God and how complex we make it. Norris concludes that one reason we worship is to respond to God’s grace, praising God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks to the faith God has in us.

May we have the faith and the assurance that it is so.
– Caley Ortman, Chaplain