Grace astounds

"I will love God because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will. The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey him in return." (Donald Miller; Blue Like Jazz)

I have recently started reading Miller's Blue Like Jazz, well after it is fashionable to do so. I missed the boat on this fad in Christianity (like I often do). I picked it up after noticing it on some friends' bookshelves, and asking them what they thought. Both friends told me that they never got through it because it is too self-involved. From what they said, I fully expected the pages to ooze self-indulged pop faith philosophy.

Thus far, though, I have been surprised. Perhaps I am too self-involved, but I am being challenged by much of what Miller is writing, whether it be because it is quite different from how I approach my own faith, or because I resonate quite closely with his self-revelations.

The above quotation is one of the latter instances. Grace astounds me. If I allow myself the existential indulgence, I can be crippled by the awareness that nothing I can ever do will overcome my unworthiness to receive and be saved by the grace of God. I am stunned to inactivity, and beat down by the many failings that become so apparent.

But how great that grace is that brings me Miller's words, reminding me of what I already know: that it is not about me, but all about God's love.

I don't know if this book will continue to challenge me, or what I will find in the next 150 pages, but I go to bed tonight encouraged that I am not the only person that has ever been confronted by her own humanity, and wondered how to fight the good fight in its wake.