I've had some fun today playing around with the idea of grace in the light of suggestions that 'grace', or at least 'charis' has associations with abstract concepts like 'charm' and 'beauty.'  As part of my introduction on Sunday I'm using a picture of ballet dancer and a swimming swan, which are often seen as 'graceful' - the elegance and beauty belying the effort and concentration 'under the surface.'  But the idea of 'graceful' - being filled with grace - as becoming beautiful, beguiling, attractive, winsome and so on appealed.

But if grace is of God, then in some way these words each something of God's Godness - and it is a wonderful challenge for me to contemplate such ideas as the 'winsomeness of God.'  I am reminded of one of my favourite childhood hymns 'God is love, his the care' with its refrain 'God is good, God is truth, God is beauty, praise Him.'

Grace is free in evey sense of the word - not only is there no charge, but it is unbounded.  I am finding that my metpahpors around 'grace' and my metaphors around 'Spirit' are overlapping and am wondering if that matters?  One of my favourite film images of God is in the (dire) film 'Dogma' where God appears as a young woman turning cartwheels (I know I've mentioned this in a past post but am too lazy to check back where, and if it's good enough for the likes Theresa of Avila...).  Might there be a playful delight in grace as well as all the intense doctrinal stuff?

God you are...

beautiful 

beguiling 

winsome

ethereal

real

funny

scary

playful 

serious

vulnerable

powerful

closer than my breathing

yet beyond my imagining or understanding

beyond words

yet word of life...