All-is-well Grace

Hagar and her boy were dying of thirst with a well less than a bowshot away. How to find God in the mess?

That’s the mystery map to the deep seeing! We saw His glory … because … we have all received one grace after another. We have all received one grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment when we wake to the one grace after another. “If you want to be really alert to seeing Jesus’ divine beauty, his glory … then make sure you tune your senses to see his grace,” urges theologian John Piper (emphasis added). “That’s what his glory is full of.”^a Grace — that is what the full life is full of, what the God-glory is full of. To see the glory, name the graces. Retune the impaired senses to sense the Spirit, to see the grace. Couldn’t I do that anywhere?

Why is it so hard? Practice, practice.

What insanity compels me to shrivel up when there is joy’s water to be had here? In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this: I’m blind to joy’s well every time I really don’t want it. The well is always there. And I choose not to see it. Don’t I really want joy? Don’t I really want the fullest life? For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy — is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark?

Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control’s muscle? Ah — power—like Satan. Do I think Jesus-grace too impotent to give me the full life? Isn’t that the only reason I don’t always swill the joy? If the startling truth is that I don’t really want joy, there’s a far worse truth. If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment, am I not ultimately rejecting God? Whenever I am blind to joy’s well, isn’t it because I don’t believe in God’s care? That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy’s water, wherever I am, regardless of circumstance. But if I don’t believe God cares, if I don’t want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment — I don’t want God.

In His presence is fullness of joy. He is in this moment.

The well is always here. God is always here — precisely because He does care.

God faithfully provides water for His people everywhere.

When you know you’re Hagar and you finally come to the end of yourself and all the water in your canteen is gone and you know you and your son are going to die if you don’t get some joy to the lips and down the parched throat — and now; when you can no longer stand to see those you love die all around you from your emptiness, pray with the eyes wide open and prayer becomes revelation. Eyes change and what we see changes in them.

You have to want to see the well before you can drink from it. You have to want to see joy, God in the moment.

Hagar had known God sees, for she had met Him before, needy in the sands, yet when sent away the second time, Hagar had forgotten. She had laid her son down to die and couldn’t see any well. In the domestic cloud of dust and family, I too can forget the One who sees me, but in eucharisteo I remember. I cup hands and all the world is water.

Love is not blind; love is the holy vision.

For a glancing moment, I am Hagar healed, Hagar who had spoken once before in a desert exile. The well, it is still there.

There is always a well — all is well.

Lord, that You would give one grace after another — tune my senses to see Your grace. Focus my sight to see the well — that all is well.