A Moment Aside --- 6 July 2021
Flannery O’Connor is the name of an American writer not all that well known in Canada. That’s not because she was an American but because she wrote novels and short stories about the ideas, attitudes, and mores of the American South. Some have called her works examples of “Southern Gothic” because of the use of odd and even grotesque characters and the Southern setting in her writing.
Her works are also soaked
in her Christian faith, without being obvious or apologetic (as in an “apology”
or an explanation or defense of a point of faith), similar to the background of
the British author and scholar, J.R.R. Tolkien. Both writers grounded their
works in their faith without being “preachy.”
The quote above speaks of
our human nature and the nature of grace. Grace is the free gift of God and our
nature rebels against such a gift, not because we don’t like gifts, but because
we want to do it ourselves whether for personal glory or achievement or to
present our wonderful selves to God as a gift.
We also resist because –simply
said- grace changes us and all change if painful. Resetting a broken bone is
painful. Learning to live with another person requires plenty of changes.
So does grace. So we don’t
like it and we resist it. As someone said we’ll be dragged kicking and
screaming into the Kingdom of God… but we’ll be in that Kingdom!
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