Parakalein

I was sitting with someone today who was overcome with guilt.  As she looked at her guilty part she noticed that it felt guilt and shame because of something she did not do,  She also noticed another part that felt she did what she needed to do.  The guilty part was hammering her and the grace part was warming her from the inside with compassion and care.

I thought:  Grace is God's posture. Guilt is our pressure on ourselves.  Then I pictured God watching Adam and Eve that first day when they defied the command of the God who made them. I told the person of the picture in my head and asked her what she felt was God's first response to Eve and Adam eating the fruit?

She hesitated and said, "anger, disappointment, punishment".  God's first response was to do and say nothing.  It was not that God had nothing to say.  It was that God wanted what they had done to be respected and allowed to sink into their being.  To often we act impulsively and judgmentally to the wrong people do so they have no opportunity to feel and sense their wrong.  By the time morning rolled around they had felt their shame and guilt and were in hiding.  Shame and guilt drive people into hiding.  Grace invites people into loving presence.

So the first thing that God does is nothing.  the second thing God does is come into the garden with the same desire to fellowship with them that he had the day before.  For God nothing in his heart toward them had changed.  All that had changed was in and around them.  The third thing God did was to reach out with grace to seek to invite them out of hiding and into the presence of compassion and calmness.  Everything God did that day was of grace not to introduce guilt bu tto counter balance guilt with grace.

Guilt is like a sink hole that sucks people into it. Grace always fills the hole and makes a person whole.