I’m a melancholy.

This means I often wade out into each day half-cocked, one foot in and one foot out,  anticipating morning misgivings and wishing my work space was a mattress-lined, dimly-lit den, and that my work was simply to wake up and go back to sleep five times a day.  My mood grabs and drives me too often, and that mood is often blue, a result of daily weighing my life and its fruits against the “should have”s and “ought to be”s that dominate my self-evaluations.  Most people don’t wander into each day feeling adrift on a sea of reluctancies and self-questioning.

Today is one of those days.  If I was allowed to quit everything going on in my life, on days like this, I would.  But I know I can’t.

I struggle with my thinking on days like these because I believe deeply in God’s grace, and that the good that happens in our lives is a product of His kindness exclusively.  Contrary to many opinions, I don’t think the Bible says that winning God’s favor is how people are supposed to work, and that God’s kindness is the fruit of achievement in His great meritocracy.  No.

There is an expansive gulf that completely separates each human being from the kindness of God, and this is a gulf, according to the Bible, that no human accomplishment can bridge.  The only bridge that can cross this gulf was actually made by God, initiated by His love, and built on the sacrifice His Son made, giving His life so that sin could be stopped, death destroyed, and the salvation of any consenting soul secured.  This bridge is grace.

Still, in our world, and in the daily life of the church, we hear subtle suggestions that we must do more and be more to “stand in good graces”, to qualify for the unconditional favor of God.  I realize I believe this lie so readily because in my daily thinking, I regularly clamor to find the missing pieces I need in my life in hopes that I will see everything come together for me, or just experience little victories in my days which tell me God is with me.

Part of the fallacy in my thinking is the fallacy that is common to many believers (in Christ, or in karma), and that fallacy is simply if I am one of God’s good ones, everything is going to fall together in my life and I will experience health, wealth, peace, and prosperity.  While we appreciate it, prosperity was never God’s primary intention for us.  We were made to know and to walk with Him.  And sometimes knowing and walking with Him means at moments in our journey, we don’t just get whatever we wish for.  God has no interest in us being spoiled children, driving Him around with requests and recreation, as though He is a big cosmic babysitter.  He made us to mature in our lives.

The other fallacy in my thinking here is a false belief that is an inversion of the striver’s spirituality.  This is a belief that if I cannot qualify for God’s grace, it cannot and will not find me.  I too often struggle with this perception, that while God is happy to shower his blessings on others, I somehow am outside of His visual range, and, akin to the spiritual martyr, I must be special to God because I get to suffer and have my wishes regularly confounded by Him.  This case makes me think of the story about Jesus with the paralytic man at the pool in Bethsaida in John 5.  For 38 years, this man lay by the pool hoping that one day he would be able to touch the water when the Spirit was present, and that he would be healed.  But for 38 years, he never got help to get into the healing waters.  Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  I think Jesus was trying to tell the paralytic that His grace was always available to him, and that his life could be recovered, if he would just trust in that grace.  God’s grace is available to all of us, despite our circumstances- but we have to put our weight on it, and trust that His favor will come through when we lean on Him.

With God’s grace given to us at His initiation, not based on what we bring to the table, and dependent only on our agreement to put our lives in His hands, His grace has been the great counter to my melancholic tendencies.  I do not always fully understand the direction and motions of my life, but God’s grace tells us that everything is going to end well, that all of the pieces are eventually going to fit together, and that it is because it brings Him joy that He acts on our behalf.

My work each day is to remember that He is not like me, His kindness is not dependent on my moods or understanding, that I can and must trust Him as life comes at me.  It’s in His actions in my life that He makes Himself known to me, and that He makes my self- the new creation- known to me as well.