Grace for Grace

"Never let the sun go down on your anger." is a quote from Little Women, (technically it's from the Bible, but it will always be from Little Women in my mind) a book I read as soon as I learned how to read. I couldn't quote anything else from Little Women, but that phrase stayed with me. When I was little, I was an angry child, easily provoked, petty, and everything in between. I would get in an argument with my sister or my mother, and then I would coddle that offense all day. I would stroke it and whisper sweet nothings to it, convinced that I was right to have this offense and anger towards whomever wronged me. But without fail, at the end of the day I would be in my bunk bed trying to fall asleep, unable to rest because the whisper of "Never let the sun go down on your anger." played over and over. Again without fail, I would crawl out of bed and go to either my mom or sister and whisper my apology, so thoroughly convicted and wanting to repair things ...

I used to be a worrier. I used to feel that if I didn't understand everything then I would somehow miss out on an important part of God or be less of a Christian. So much of our thought life is used up by trying to understand every aspect, almost distracting ourselves by trying to put things in order and get a handle on it all, but the truth is that there will always be so much that is unknown and has yet to be discovered about God, about ourselves, and about life, and we do ourselves a disservice by striving to know it all at once. I think the mystery of things is half the beauty, and there are some things that I never want to fully understand, that I want to remain baffling and wonderous. "Getting caught in the swirls." was a phrase that I heard and it immediately resonated with me. "The swirls" are offshoots of our intended focus, things that distract and pull us away from the core thing of the matter. We have to let go of our obsessive need to understand...