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A friend of mine shared this story with me. An angel was walking down the street carrying a torch in one hand and a pail of water in the other. A woman asked the angel, “What are you going to do with the torch and with the pail?” The angel said, “With the torch, I am going to burn down the mansions of heaven, and with the pail, I’m going to put out the fires of hell. Then we shall see who really loves God.”
That’s what grace does; it empowers those who really love and trust God, and frankly leaves all others in the realm of missed opportunity. Our image for that missed opportunity has been hell later, but it is primarily and clearly emptiness now. In that deepest sense, there are indeed many people in hell right now, and there are also many people tasting heaven in this world. But Divine Love never relents, and never stops urging, expanding, and appealing. Why would it stop after our death?
Only the theme of grace is prepared to move religion beyond the bad and tired story line of reward and punishment. Up to now, we have largely mirrored ego-based culture instead of transforming it. We need grace to reform religion and to recapture the gospel. Only the theme of grace can move us from a religion of mere requirements (that is all about counting and measuring) to a religion of Divine Abundance which deeply transforms human consciousness (Ephesians 4:23-24).
As long as we remain inside of a win-lose script, Christianity will continue to appeal to low-level and self-interested morality and never rise to the mystical banquet that Jesus offers us. It will be duty instead of delight, “jars of purification” (John 2:6) instead of 150 gallons of intoxicating wine at the end of the party (John 2:7-10)!
Adapted from
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality,
pp. 158-159
Gateway to Silence:
Open me to grace upon grace upon grace.
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