“he describes the grace coming to us as a wave of light breaking into our darkness, as if a voice were saying:

‘you are accepted.  you are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.  do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later.  do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much.  do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything.  simply accept the fact that you are accepted!  if that happens to us, we experience grace.’ “

- peter gomes quoting paul tillich

early one fall morning i found myself uncharacteristically awake.  not merely ‘not asleep’, but in fact wide awake.  as i happened to be at the beach, i felt impelled to walk down to the water in order to witness the rising sun.  now, this is entirely an unusual experience for me.  i rarely wake early enough for some adventure like this to occur, but even were i to find myself awake, my first instinct would be an immediate attempt to continue sleeping, not energetically hopping up to seek out the sun.

such was the case though as i quietly snuck from the house trying earnestly not to wake the others.  i found myself alone in the predawn dusk, weaving a meticulous path through the lot between our house and the beach in order to avoid sand spurs (and meeting with only moderate success).  picking out two or three of the little devils, i walked along the beach till the first blades of sunlight crested the water on the far horizon.  i sat to watch the rest emerge where the tide had carved a bench into the sand.  i watched, joyfully taking in the unfamiliar sight.

as the sun cleared the line of the water, and the moment that is sunrise passed, i began to wonder to myself whether or not i were courageous enough to listen for god.  i knew that my wakefulness had been for a reason.  god had brought me down to the water because he wanted me here.  my assumption was that he needed something of me.  perhaps, he had something for me to do, a task.  so, taking the sunrise as the opening pleasantries to our conversation, i proceeded to ask what exactly it was that he had for me to do.  the following moment will never leave my memory.  god spoke to me.  not in the sense that something audible was in the air, but in that my mind was now full of the response to it’s question of him. he replied gently, “i don’t want you to do anything.  i just wanted to tell you that i love you.”  the words echoed in my mind.  “i just wanted to tell you that i love you.”  there was no task, nothing for me to do, only rest in the knowledge that i was loved without condition.  the weight of my anxiety was lifted from my chest.  this was not a love that needed anything of me.  it was greater than my ability to affect it.  it just was.

i returned to the house changed.  lighter maybe; as if the weight of always trying to earn love had been taken from my shoulders.  i would always be loved, regardless of, in spite of, anything i could do to earn it.  what happened in that moment explains more of my faith that anything else i’ve experienced.  the gift of that sunrise was the most unexpected and powerful encounter with god that i have ever had, and from it i finally started to understand what grace was all about.  in that moment i was met by god…and then i went back to bed, and slept until a normal hour.