Life is Grace

Saturday 12/22/18 5:36 AM

Yesterday I went to visit Adam Cram, a friend who is recuperating from a serious motorcycle accident. He is in Fontana and it took about an hour and twenty minutes to get there. I rode my motorcycle and had a great view of the San Gabriel Mountains throughout the trip. I was traveling the same freeway on which he had his accident and I was hyperaware as I rode along the freeway. My senses were on high alert and it seemed like I experienced the things along the way at a deeper level than normal. I often had this sensation when I ride my motorcycle and I often find that I breathe a prayer of thanks to God for my life and for this wonderful world in which I live.

This morning I went to the gym for my daily workout. I went about three and a quarter miles on an elliptical trainer, my substitute for an early morning run since injuring my hip. When I exercise, I have much the same sense of heightened awareness of my body and of the things around me. Being confined to a gym somewhat dulls the awareness because of the bright lights and noise, but I listen to music that draws my mind to God and a close my eyes to block out the light. This allows me the opportunity to hear God speak when I have a heightened awareness of his presence.

Today I read a quote by Frederick Buechner in his book Now and Then that expresses the same idea. “… if I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say … it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

God has given me a mind and personality that afford me the opportunity to stop, focus, and listen to the events and circumstances in which I find myself and to see them as a great gift of God. It is easier to see God in the good things that come my way but, for the last couple of years God is allowing me to see the movement of God in the difficult and bad things I experience and that my friends experience, things like Adam’s accident. As Buechner points out, life is grace indeed.