I saw the movie I Can Only Imagine and felt so many emotions. Anger, rage, self righteous judgement, frustration, and finally unadulterated raw sadness. At first I was angry with Dennis Quaid’s character. For anyone to have such internal hate and rage and take it out on a child and wife is horrific, and I felt a surge of hate towards him. Then I realized, to God, my hate is no different than his. He is God’s child every bit as much as me, and God knows every hurt that penetrated his core, spawning that rage inside of him. What a beautiful reminder of redemption, restoration! No matter who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, we cannot escape the love and forgiveness of God.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39
His grace is sufficient. We don’t need to earn it, we can’t. It is given freely to all. Unfortunately those of us who have grown up in the church with loving parents aren’t able to understand that kind of grace. If your most evil transgression is lying about whether or not you ate your brother’s Easter candy(sorry Scott), then you’re not going to have quite the wonderment of grace that the prodigal son had. I tend to identify with the brother who stayed home and did what he was supposed to do. God’s grace is truly beyond my comprehension. His love is greater than my understanding.
Brennan Manning understood that grace and wrote about it in The Ragamuffin Gospel. When I read that book, I finally had a glimpse through someone else’s experience and it broke down all my barriers of etiquette, supposed to’s, and civilized emotions. God’s Love and Grace aren’t fair. In fact, they’re wildly inappropriate! That God will seek us out to the ends of the earth no matter where we are, who we’re with, what we’ve done, and pick us up, cradle us and let us weep exhaustedly in His arms…now that’s crazy grace. I’ll take it!
In the true story of I Can Only Imagine, Bart Millard of the Christian band Mercy Me, desperately struggles with forgiving his dad, played by Dennis Quaid. His father is an angry, frustrated man who abuses his wife and son until he accepts God’s grace and becomes the dad Bart always wanted. Those of us who have known someone completely transformed by God’s forgiveness have a better understanding of the power of God’s grace. I’ll never forget a phone call I received 20 years ago from someone I love who was a professed atheist and had found himself in rehab. He told me he met a friend of mine, someone I’d known all my life. I thought he meant a friend from high school till he said, “I met Jesus.” I fell on my knees in tears. Jesus met him without my evangelizing and preaching and saving?? Jesus met him on His terms, not mine, and I’m so grateful! I watched his life completely change as he gave everything to God, as he put all his trust in our Redeemer. That’s the kind of crazy grace that transforms lives and can change the world. I’ve seen it and this movie reminded me of its power. It’s definitely worth seeing but take a box of Kleenex.
Seasons of the Soul 