The confessional apostle
presents us with a candid view
of his struggles; of his continuing battle
with what he calls the flesh.
Aware of his failures
to the point of despair, but not quite;
he turns his pain into a celebration
of the grace revealed in his Lord.
The apostle does what so many have done
in the two millennia that have elapsed
since he wrote his letters;
he exaggerates his depravity
in order to make larger the grace,
forgetting that his Lord’s generosity
already has no limits.
I remember, in my youth, hearing stories
of people whose alcohol-plagued
and morally-degraded lives
were miraculously turned around
in testimony to the gospel;
and momentarily wishing that I, too,
could speak of such a gutter-to-glory
transformation. But grace
is proven in many ways; our humanness
is always a number of notches less than perfect,
and each one of us depends
upon the generosity of others,
including our strange God.
It is unnecessary to imagine
that we are worse than we are,
and it is foolishness to pretend
that, of ourselves, we can do nothing right.
Grace still abounds, and we should celebrate
kind and loving acts wherever we find them,
whether or not they are done consciously
in the service of God.
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