The
writer Frederick Buechner discusses God in the every day in his acclaimed book The Alphabet of Grace. In it Buechner
distills the idea that grace is a gift found in toast and rainy day jeep rides
through the fog. The rhythms of life are the rhythms of our faith. Each day
grace is etched throughout our living; we can experience this wonderful gift
from God if only we look for it and relish it. It is a perspective that is
cultivated.
We
often miss the grace of the everyday because we are too worried about things we
have no control over. Or perhaps we are looking to the next bend in the road,
just over the brow of the hill, as Lewis so famously said … there we find
purpose.
And
yet all the while our purpose dwindles like a winter sunset, fading into gray.
We’ve lost our chance at the “now”.
“The
people,” writes Buechner, “the ones you love and the ones who bore you to
death, all the life you have in you to live with them, if you do not live it
with them today will never be lived.”[i]
But
Buechner’s words fall on deaf ears don’t they. We are too busy to see the grace
in the now. We strive our lives away hour by hour. And all the while our neighbor
needs an encouraging word, our friend needs a prayer, our brother needs
reconciliation.
“It
is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it
will never be again.” Seize the now. Look around and realize the ministry set
before you. You have an opportunity. “Be alive if you can all through this day
today of your life. What’s to be done?”[ii]
The
mornings and the commutes and the PTA meetings and the custody battles consume
us. Our perspective, then, is tainted. We see only obstacles facing us each day
when we should see moments of eternity.
"Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your children and your wife. Think about the work of your hands ... Live in the needs of the day."[iii]
