Hope with Grace – Part Ten
Last week I quoted Os Guinness, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Bart Simpson – all expressing how easy it is to live a life lacking gratitude to God. Let’s explore the background to some of their thinking.
Solzhenitsyn’s life was dramatically impacted when he was “inexplicably” healed from cancer in Tashkent in 1954. He had been discharged to die with hopelessly acute malignant tumours. He saw his healing as a divine miracle which further led him to see that the life that was returned to him was not his own, but to be lived selflessly and purposefully for God.
Dostoevsky was sentenced to execution by firing squad in 1849 and was reprieved seconds before the triggers were pulled. The trauma of facing certain, unexpected death never left the novelist. He spent the next four years in a Siberian camp with iron chains around his ankles; followed by a further four years of enforced military service on the Chinese border. During this time his constant literary companion was a copy of the Gospels. He understood the parable of the prodigal son in a way that dominated his life; he insisted that it be read to him for a final time as he was dying.
It seems that those people who have escaped death or significant trauma have a heightened sense of their gratitude to God which lessens their expectation of human rights. My point is obvious; Are we not a people who have had the wrath of God taken from us through the grace of Jesus Christ? It is only by knowing the great grace of God that our selfishness can be killed. “Hope with grace!”
Our students are becoming like us;[1] what will they imitate? Augustine described the Christian as an “Alleluia from head to foot.” George Herbert, a seventeenth century Christian poet often prayed;
“You have given so much to me. Give me one more thing – a grateful heart.”[2]
We need to be the aroma of Christ to our young people and to the world. We so easily take on the mantle of personal rights born from our belief that our comfort is the paramount goal of life; but, as Francis Chan suggests, “something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”[3]
G K Chesterton, in typical pithy style, says:
“Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.”[4]
Together daily rejoicing in hope as we rely upon the grace of Christ,
Brian
[1] Luke 6:40
[2] “Gratefulness” a poem by George Herbert (1593–1633)
[3] Chan Francis Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God David Cook Publishers (rev 2013) p81
[4] Chesterton G K The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton P341-342, Sheed & Ward, New York. (1936)