Amazing Grace

     

Motivational speaker and columnist, Jon Gordon, author of the widely read book on success strategies, The Carpenter (Wiley, 2014), suggests we should all start each new year by choosing a single word to which we should attach (no, commit) ourselves during the year ahead. Gordon doesn’t insist that our word should have religious roots or an inspirational thrust, but his regular readers and audiences will suspect that that’s what he has in mind.

      He puts it this way: “Nine out of ten people will fail with their [New Year’s] resolutions, but one word sticks. No goals, no resolutions. Just one word that helps you write and create a yearly chapter in your life story. It’s powerful.”

      It didn’t take me more than ten seconds to settle on my word for 2019—Grace. And within another ten seconds I found myself dipping into books and newspaper articles that focused on the qualities inherent in the word I’d chosen.

      Some of what I found seemed to be sheer coincidence, though no surprise to me. For example, I had already started my annual reading of a book by a religion writer I admire and know through my coverage, as a journalist, of spiritual retreats and conferences, Philip Yancey.

      The book is What’s So Amazing About Grace (Zondervan, 1997). And every time I turn its pages, I imagine I can hear in the background the strains of John Newton’s 1779 hymn “Amazing Grace,” enriched by the voice of Aretha Franklin, or Andrea Bocelli, or the Soweto Gospel Choir.

      Last year, Yancey’s book was at the heart of a New York Times Op-Ed column by Peter Wehner under the title “The Uncommon Power of Grace." He wrote: “You don’t sense hard edges, dogmatism or self-righteous judgment from gracious people. There’s a tenderness about them that opens doors that had previously been bolted shut.”

      People who have been transformed by grace, said Wehner,  “have a special place in their hearts for those living in the shadows of society. They’re easily moved by stories of suffering and step into the breach to heal. And grace properly understood always produces gratitude” (December 23, 2018).

      I welcomed those observations by Wehner almost as much as I regularly enjoy the wisdom in Yancey’s book, which embraces many enshadowed people. He opens with these lines from W.H. Auden: “I know nothing, except what everyone knows—if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

      Yancey explains that, as a writer, he plays with words all day long, and has found that some of them, such as charity (originally the highest form of love), tend to spoil over the years. He suggests that one word he keeps circling back to is grace, which he describes as ”the last best word.” In every English usage he can find, it retains some of the glory of the original.

      He writes: “The word underlies our proud civilization, reminding us that good things come not from our own efforts, rather by the grace of God.”

      Yancey insists that grace isn’t an easy word to write about. He would rather convey grace than explain it. But when he looks back on his own wanderings, detours, and dead ends, he realizes that what pulled him along was his search for grace.

       Many of us join in this search almost every day. But no one showed more enthusiasm than a friend of mine who liked to share her findings with me over weekly lunches, come rain or shine.

       One day her excitement spilled over as she thrust a shaking hand toward me. It held a slightly crumpled piece of paper on which she had scribbled her latest poem. For me, twelve years later, it still leaves me speechless and grateful (whatever the weather!):

Like rain or sunlight pouring

grace

plays no favorites

seeks no chosen vessel

grace

awaits no invitation

demands no pious pleas

Love's dawn breaks unbeckoned blessing all.

Washed in the glow of simple grace,

we "the just … the unjust" stand

amazed, sometimes,

by its wonder …

forgetful of its law.

—Bettie Gray

(Christian Science Sentinel, July 17, 2006).