I recently read the 10th installment of Jan Karon’s Mitford series, “Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good.” (available in ARC’s library). Father Tim, an Episcopal priest and the main character of the series, wrestles with a hard question in this book: Can human beings truly extend unlimited grace to others?
Let me explain how he arrived at that question. At the time of this book Father Tim is now about seventy years old, but as he approached sixty God interrupted his tidy, structured bachelor life with some major changes: the onset of diabetes, the adoption of an enormous dog, a beautiful woman moving next door who eventually became his wife, and the adoption of a young boy who had grown up in the back woods of North Carolina with his abusive father.
All of these events and many other adventures are detailed in the previous nine books, and along the way it became known that Father Tim’s adopted son Dooley had several other siblings who had been scattered around the country through the substance abuse and neglect of his parents. Over the course of many years they begin the difficult task of trying to track down Dooley’s brothers and sisters, but in some cases finding them only made things more difficult. This was especially true of Sammy.
Even after Sammy was removed as a teenager from the custody of his drunken Father, he still wasn’t free. He was overcome by anger and self-loathing, and the result was an inability to accept love from Father Tim and others in the community. Sammy began to lash out, breaking the pool cue he was given as a gift, defying the house rules with regard to smoking and chewing and cussing, and finally taking the beloved Mustang convertible for a joyride without permission that ended in the complete totaling of the vehicle.
After the accident Father Tim isn’t sure how to respond, and for the first time he finds himself really angry at Sammy. How is he supposed to show grace in this situation? When you don’t feel like showing grace do you just go through the motions anyway? He thinks,
“Grace may be a no-brainer for God, but for him it was clearly impossible to deliver. If mock grace was going to bring anything to the table, the heart must be kept free of malice. But how? Yank out the bitter weed, and in a flash, back it comes, and more of it.”
Do you have someone in your life you have been showing grace, but it doesn’t seem to work? Have you reached the end of your ability to show grace without feeling “malice” toward that person? I think Ephesians gives something of an answer to Father Tim’s dilemma: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore…” (Eph. 4:32-5:1a)
It is always good to remind ourselves of the extent to which God shows us grace through the cross but also on a daily basis. If He can do that for us, we can do the same for others, even when we don’t feel like it. No, we aren’t God, but we can be “imitators of God” and over time his incredible love will become our own. In the end we may discover that God is just as interested in changing our hearts as the people to whom we are trying to model His grace.
Cory Grimm