Mind in the Box

Dave Brisbin 7.20.25 We’ve painfully learned that when something seems too good to be true…be very careful or run. Grace falls into this category. What’s too good to be true more than unmerited favor, unconditional acceptance? Not only too good, but not even fair or ethical. Our theology speaks of grace, but denies it in practice, lost in the glare of reward and punishment. That paradigm, created for us and reinforced by us, is like a box for our minds, describing life and our role so rigidly that even if we do somehow get a glimpse of graceful love, we still can’t believe it really extends to us, unworthy as we are. Unworthy people can’t imagine they qualify for grace. Shame blinds them. Perfect people can’t imagine they need grace. Entitlement blinds them. So hard to fall in between. The only way to experience the first possibility of grace is to fully admit and embrace our imperfections and failings and yet keep showing up to the possibility of relationship—just as we are, with no pretense or expectation—to graduate from shame or entitlement to gratitude. Gratitude is telling. We’re only grateful for gifts we could never give ourselves…best definition of grace. This is Jesus’ whole job: graduating us to the gratitude of grace. He knows he’s got to shock our minds out of the box that defines our lives and denies the existence of grace, and it’s got to be a violent shock, a loss of comforting but limiting beliefs as painful as his own was in the wilderness experience that brought him right to the edge. He knows how we think, that we’re always thinking, and that if we’re thinking it, naming it, trying to control it, we’re missing it. How do you know when you’re in love? Can you explain it? Define it? Control it? Only way to fall in love, experience grace, is to stop thinking, fall out of control. Admit you were never in control and that you don’t exist independently. Isn’t that how it feels? That each breath is not your own, but your beloved’s. Your life only has meaning in theirs? That’s grace, and to move so completely into connection with another is to shock our minds out of the box and graduate to gratitude.