What’s this? You ask for my name? You wouldn’t understand — it’s sheer wonder. Judges 13:8 (MSG)

The Grace – The Wonder and Grace Series – Part 7

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Wonder is not an entitlement, or a luxury, or a commodity. It's a grace.

A generative, creative, life-affirming gift.

It takes grace to allow yourself to sit with complexity. To listen without trying to answer. To be open to learning, vulnerability and the unknown. To make room for the immensities (thanks, Rob Bell). To love our enemies, neighbors and most of all, ourselves. And this grace that we need exists within us and apart from us, connecting us one to another. That's why to be held in this Divine Grace is a trinity of love: Love of God, love of neighbor, love of self.

When an angel appeared to Manoah and his wife (separately), and said, “What’s this? You ask for my name? You wouldn’t understand — it’s sheer wonder.” (Judges 13:18), he was in a way, inviting them into the grace that holds us all. The wonderful mystery of the presence of God in and through it all.

But we really do need to become like children in our pursuit of the mystery. Child-like faith that asks questions excitedly with anticipation knowing that the mystery never runs out. It’s not something that we cannot understand, but God is something/someone who is endlessly understandable.

Richard Rohr says that he is, “multilayered and pregnant with meaning.” Manoah and his wife went onto have Samson. And Samson went on to live an incredibly complex and tragic life. His story is one of the most told stories in Sunday Schools, and the least taught story from platforms. What do we do with a life as tumultuous, violent, passionate and misunderstood as his?

Maybe the simple fact that his story is included communicates the grace in which he was held, and the grace in which we are held, too. I may not have killed hundreds of people with a donkey’s jawbone, or have super-human strength, or many of the other things that Samson experienced. By my life was born of “sheer wonder,” as was yours, as was all life. I’m riddled with flaws and failings and humiliations. And I’m also filled with grace. When I surrender to that grace, come face-to-face with the presence and beauty of God in me and around me, I think the wonder of God can be seen, even if ever so slightly, through it all.

So friends, grace, and peace to you. May you pursue the endless wonders of God's love and grace, and every day come face-to-face with this generative, creative, all-encompassing gift that is yours for the taking.

Written by Lizzy Milani
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