Following on from my previous post, I have been thinking a lot about the grace of God recently. Hardly surprising, as I am frequently in need of huge doses of it, but also because I have been immersed in thoughts about our understandings of hell, redemption and atonement.
As part of this I re-read Brian McLaren’s book “The Last Word, and the Word After that” which adventures into this territory. I read the whole thing in one sleepless night, hungry as I was to try to come to some view of these things myself.
From this, I wrote this;
The last word
I was reading a story from the Gospel of Mark about
Jesus. It was one of the hard passages where he uses
words that bite – words that leave no space for
my failure.
Jesus told his disciples to stand up for him before men and
the angels will sing. However those who disown
him will be lost – sent out in
disgrace.
And then I remembered Peter.
Rock of the Church.
Three time sinner before the crow of the cock.
Then I remembered too the story of the Garden where
God tells Adam (and Eve) that if they eat the fruit of the tree they shall surely die.
Not in abstract; they had no concept of the legacy left by the origin of their sin.
Yet they do not die, and God
cares for them, clothes them, sends them out onto the human race
like an anxious parent.
There is God’s
last word –
and the
word
after
that
which is always
‘grace’.
(with apologies to Brian Mclaren for pinching his book title.)