Why do I believe I am surrounded by God’s grace?
Part 5: God is an additional “something extra” which is experienced within life: the fullness of grace
So, my experience of the grace of God is something like this. When I am engaged in the busyness of my life, I am “too busy” to be aware of God’s presence. I am doing my job; I am going to the shops; I am making dinner. But whenever – or very often when – I “look up” from my activities, when I have a moment of reflection, or self-awareness, I become aware that I am surrounded by God’s presence. I am enfolded, or embraced, in God’s love. Aswell as all the good things in my life, I am also conscious of an additional love over-shadowing me, filling me, actively loving me. So, I do not simply or only experience the goodness of life, how much I enjoy life, how many good and lovely and wonderful experiences there are in my life: I also experience a person who through, and beyond – and sometimes despite or regardless of the outward experiences of my life – the activities of my life is expressing his love to me. This is why it is grace. I have not done anything in particular to deserve this additional gift. It all just “comes at me” as an additional dimension to life – an underserved, exuberant, over-flowing gift of joy and love, which imparts to me an ineffable but utterly complete sense of fulfilment. I am loved. And not just by anyone, but by God himself. The God who is pure love, loves me. This is utterly bonkers beyond the realms of rationality or even delusional fantasy. Yet it presents itself to me – as to countless others – as a simple reality of existence. To attempt to live without this dimension of life is what strikes me as utterly bonkers-ludicrous (though I fully appreciate that some people just do not see it, even though many of them would love to). As a fish cannot live without being surrounded by water, but I imagine – if fish could do such thought – fish cannot conceive of life without being surrounded by water, so, when I look at the sky, at the curve of the earth’s dome above me, it is as though I am a fish surrounded by water. God’s presence is everywhere, and wherever God is, there is an experience of grace – of the over-flowing, healing, forgiving, renewing, empowering kindness and care of God.
I should note that if God is not real, so that all that I am describing is an invention of the human mind, then surely this is humanity’s greatest ever achievement. However, God’s grace does not strike me as something I have invented. I did not have to “work at it”. It’s just something I discovered one day. Just to clarify, I do not count my religious life to a particular day as do people who can give the precise moment and circumstances when they first encountered God. For me, it was a more gradual process whereby at the age of 12 I did not know God and was not really interested in religion and then one day when I was 15 I suddenly realised that I do now believe, and have done for some time. Somehow in that interval God had become real to me. I had learnt how to, or come to, perceive his presence. God would interrupt me walking home from school and his reality, his presence and his wonderful love were simply blindingly obvious to me. Much anguish and ups and down in faith have unfolded over the last 50 years, but the reality – now clearer to me than ever – is the same as in those first experiences. God is simply a reality that I experience; that experience is of a person; that person is someone who loves me (and everyone else) with an unconditional, unfailing, invincible love. Hence the sense of grace. It is as though we who believe, live our lives continually shadowed by an extravagant donor who lavishes gifts upon us at every turn. Of course, these gifts are not material gifts, but those gifts to the person, to make our personality whole and healed, to make us fulfilled and at peace, to connect and reconcile us to each other, to console and forgive us, to inspire and energise, to fill our lives with goodness in the loving service we are able to give to others.
Spiritual Devotion 