Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

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Pastor's Pulse

by Paul Leggett, Pastor

The Gift of Amazing Grace

June 2010

“Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.” – II Cor. 4:15

I recently attended a retreat with the Montclair Clergy Association at the Presbyterian retreat center in Stony Point, New York.  Our speaker walked us through important points on our spiritual journey.  The first point dealt with the theme of loss.  Loss can take many forms.  He asked us to reflect on childhood memories about leaving our home or moving or suffering the loss of a grandparent, parent or even a pet.  The sense of loss is basic to all of us.  In one way or another we have experienced the loss of something we felt important.  Too many children today suffer loss through the divorce of their parents.  If we don’t deal with our sense of loss, in whatever form we experience it, we become immobilized or even fearful.

Our second exercise was to think of a childhood memory of expectancy, something we were looking forward to.  This included things like vacations, birthdays, Christmas or special trips.  The contrast here was evident.  Loss forces us to come to terms with the brokenness in our past.  Expectancy however points us to the hope of our future.  If we are not looking forward to something our lives become empty and fruitless.

This was an overnight retreat.  These first two exercises comprised the first night’s sessions.  I would say that while I found these exercises enlightening and indeed beneficial they were not what I would consider “spiritual.”  As I went up to my room for the night I must confess thinking to myself this sort of exercise could have been done in any number of contexts with all different kinds of people.  I wondered what was specific here for a group of pastors.  I would soon find out the next morning.

Our morning session began by asking us to remember the childhood (or even adult) thrill of a snowstorm with the prospect of school being closed (this didn’t really apply to one pastor who had grown up in Hawaii, but she could think of a few tropical storms).  The leader’s point was that from a child’s perspective the canceling of school because of a snowstorm was a special gift.  It couldn’t be scheduled.  Even with a forecast of snow you couldn’t be sure it would really happen.  When it did occur it was an unanticipated gift, something you didn’t deserve, much less could make happen.

His point then was that this is how God’s grace functions in our lives.  It is surprising, undeserved and unscheduled.  He led us through a Bible study of the boy with the five loaves and two fish (John 6:1-14).  Jesus taking the loaves and fish was completely unanticipated, unscheduled and undeserved.  The little boy couldn’t begin to feed the multitude.  Did he think he was giving away his lunch when the disciples asked him for what little he had?  The boy’s own lunch was magnified, not to mention it’s being enough to feed the five thousand. 

We face loss in life.  We have our own expectations.  But God does surprising things we can’t anticipate, much less schedule.  This is grace and no matter how little we have, or how inadequate we feel, God uses us.  This is always the gift of his amazing grace.