Of Grackles And Grace

Of Grackles and Grace

A sleek, golden-eyed blackbird scurried in front of my car as I pulled into the drive, hustling out of harm’s way with iridescent wings flapping furiously. We missed each other but not by much. Why don’t you fly, you silly old thing? I wondered. Flying would be so much simpler and more efficient than the awkward evasive movement he employed. I mean, the bird had shimmering wings for a reason!

He reminded me of me. Of the bluster and flapping about I do on a rather regular basis to try to keep safe from the threat of sin and to live a life worthy of Christ. As if I could do that for myself! “Morality,” said C. S. Lewis, “is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are ‘done away’ and the rest is a matter of flying.”^a

My grackle friend was made to fly . . . to be gracefully airborne, not nervously earthbound. He had within him the stuff he needed to ride the cool lift of a current of air. So it’s easy for me to see (and to say) that he should have been using it. But it’s harder to understand that in the same way, I have what I need to live the Christian life in the person and power of Christ himself. Yet instead of relying on him to get me where I long to go, I pull out the “ropes and axes” of self-effort as if to drag myself along to glory inch by agonizing, ugly inch.

When, oh when, will I learn for good that the grace that saved me is the grace that sustains me and will indeed be the very grace that leads me home?

After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?

Galatians 3:3

^a C. S. Lewis, “Man or Rabbit?” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 113–14.