Вконтакте

I was recently struck by a phrase: “Humans don’t have the capacity to imagine grace. When we worry about the future, there’s no God in our mental process”. I thought it was pretty accurate. When we worry it feels like there’s no God in the future that we picture in our minds. We simply cannot imagine Him there. Grace is beyond our best attempt at imagination.

The same seems true about the past as well. When we are absorbed by the memories of our wrongdoings we cannot imagine grace either. The soul is moaning under the burden of its past sins, it cannot see God. There is no God in our past or future as we imagine them.

By worrying about the future we cut ourselves off from grace. Like Frodo with the Ring on his finger, we find ourselves in the world of phantoms and fears – and before the face of the one who’s not named in the Middle Earth. Most news seem to work that way too: they plant a future in your mind with no grace in it. It’s a mirror of our imagination which cannot grasp grace.

Adam, after he had sinned, must have felt exactly that — when he realized he was naked. That is, he stopped living before the face of God and started living in his own imaginations. And he fell — before the face of the angel that has just deceived him. From this point on it was this dark spirit that informed his mind. Frodo, every time he put on the Ring, felt naked and cold before the Great Eye. His mind was focused on the future without God. God lives in the present. All times are the present for Him.

Peter must have gone through this experience at least twice – the first time when he was filled with fear and trembling at seeing the catch of fish that Jesus brought about. For a moment he must have reflected on his past sins and felt he couldn’t be forgiven. He was in his imagined past – and God wasn’t there. He cried: “Go away from me, Lord”. But Jesus pulled him out from the bog of self-reflection into the present: “Fear not, I will make you the fisher of men”.

There was yet another time in Peter’s life when he lost sight of the present – when he stepped out of the boat to walk on the water. Seeing the wind and waves he lost sight of Jesus before him, and started worrying about the future. Of course, he started drowning. But again Jesus pulled him out of the mire of self-absorption – by grabbing hold of his hand.

By leaving the “now” we lose sight of God. We become helpless and naked. And we start thinking of ways to get back to God by inventing rules and religion. Religion is the product of our morbid imaginations when we try to get back to God on our own.

We must not try to imagine God. The moment Peter was back in the present, he saw God right there in front of him. When we stop worrying about the past or future, God will be right there in front of us in the present saying:

“Follow me. Go peel potatoes. Take a nap. Write something. Catch a fish and you will find a coin in its mouth. Listen to what your children and your wife are saying. Do 20 pushups. Have a kiwi. Go to the village nearby and bring me a donkey. How about some Scottish dance?” That’s sheer grace.