Living Tree Poetry

“Grace is always present. You imagine it as something high in the sky, far away, something that has to descend. It is really inside you, in your heart. When the mind rests in its source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you.”
Ramana Maharshi

“Grace is something you can never get but only be given. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach and take it is a gift too.”
Frederick Buechner

“But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence.  We are aware.”
Louise Erdich

“Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.”
Isaiah 12:3

MY PRAYER today is for the awareness of our great need for grace, and our awareness that as much as we need it, we are surrounded by it.  We are carried by it, as on a river. But we have to allow it in to our hearts, so that it can also carry us from the inside out.

Grace seeks out and delights in the unworthy.  For only the unworthy can truly receive. We must be empty of our own sufficiency, we must be helpless in our own ability, we must falter in the faith that we can do this alone.

Then grace will flood into our hearts, like a light turned on.  And we will realise that he has us, both within and without.

Grace.

These are drawn from daily prayers and reflections I write for my chaplaincy colleagues.