The problem with preaching without a script is that on occasion, I'll remember some other point I wanted to make, but it's after the service. Most of the time, I shrug and figure it must not have been that important. But this past Sunday, preaching about Grace from the movie Project Hail Mary, I remembered something only after I was at the back of the sanctuary. I swear, I nearly ran back up with, "AND ONE MORE THING!"
But I didn't, and instead, you got to listen to lovely music. You're welcome.
(I really don't get enough credit for all the things I do NOT do.)
What was this thought?
Well, I'd already talked about the main gist of it - that the hard things we face in life, things we never ever would have chosen for ourselves, sometimes wind up shaping us in beneficial ways. And here is the point I didn't make: Chris told us the story of John Newton, the slave-trader who was in a terrible storm at sea, and when he survived the storm, wrote the song Amazing Grace, and eventually, changed from his evil ways.
For him, grace (unearned, unmerited divine favor, as he understood it) was being saved from the storm, which led to his moral transformation.
So my question is: what if grace (that which leads to our transformation) was not just being saved from the storm, but the storm itself? After all, he seemingly would not have made that change without it.
I am cautious when I enter into this line of thinking, as I think it too easily can veer off into a blame-the-victim mindset, in which someone going through heartbreak is made to feel that they are somehow to blame for it, even if it was wholly out of their control. Others have their own thoughts on this, but I cannot accept a divine or karmic causal element to suffering.
But free will does mean that we get to make meaning out of what happens in our lives, learning from those experiences if possible, and discerning whether there is anything valuable to come from it.
And right now, when so many bad things in the world are out of my control, it does give a tiny bit of hope to consider that maybe there is a chance that the storm is grace, too.
