Journal of Sacred Work

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all. – Titus 2:11

   My eyes shot open at the sound of a crackling noise. Did I hear a shuffling of feet, a cracking of
the walnuts by the fireplace? Someone had intruded into the darkness of our home. I was sure of it. My heart raced.
   It was December 24. In the midst of growing doubts in my seven-year-old mind, I suddenly had proof. Santa Claus was in the next room! This was the moment I had waited for – to catch Santa Claus in the act of delivering presents to our family. But I was too terrified to actually peek into the room. As if somehow I knew that a direct confrontation might make Santa Claus mad or, worse, make him vanish before he had time to deliver all my presents.
   That was the last Christmas of my childhood dream and the beginning of my pathway to another kind of belief…

   Everyone who grew up with Santa travels the transition out of childhood belief in a differnt way. When my dad finally confessed the truth to me, my icons fell like dominoes: No Santa? Then there must be no Easter Bunny. No Easter Bunny? Then there must be no Tooth Fairy either? No Tooth Fairy? Then there must be no God. "Wait," my father told me, "God is different. There is a God."
   I nodded my head as if I understood, but the truth is I wondered, at age seven, if maybe God was just another adult trick. It took me years (including two and a half years of Divinity School) to get my own ideas about this straight.

  The story of the appearence of God’s grace in the form of the baby
delivered to Mary has enchanted billions for millenia. This fact alone
is astonishing – that a single birth could transform the world. That is
the power of grace when it appears in human form. And that is the grace I and the rest of humankind see when we watch caregivers offering love to those in need. We need the hope that Christ has brought to us. And we all need the love that Jesus’ taught and exemplified.
   Along the
way from that blessed day of Jesus’ birth to this one, the spirit of grace has always
been present. The question has never been, Is God near? The question
has also been whether we are open to God’s presence.
   Shepherds
and kings awaited the Messiah. After his arrival, some were awed, many
others were skeptical, and many beyond that never understood what grace
appeared in that flash of light two millenia ago.
   The echoes of Jesus’ birth have sounded across the world for so long now – in the hands of artists who painted their impression of the moments after birth, in the millions of words written to describe the impact of that single event, and in the hearts of million who find new hope each year at this time as they contemplate the blessed birth of light and love. 
   I have nothing new to say. Yet, each of us always has new things to learn, new discoveries to make , and new ways to awaken to the glory of God’s grace.
   The reminders of God’s grace are everywhere. I see them in my grandson’t eyes, in my 94-year-old mother’s heart and in the loving touches my wife spreads around our home.
   The need for God’s grace is more painfully apparent. Too much of the world lives in fear of hunger, of cold, of bombs dropping from the sky or exploding from cars, of bullets fired from the guns of people who live from hate rather than love.
   The world will always need God’s grace. And it will always be available for anyone wise enough to open their hearts to receive it.
   One day, I was speaking with Dr. Patout Burns, a professor of mine at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I was talking with him about childhood magic and childhood faith. "Yes," he said. "And then when you truly come to faith as an adult you discover that the myths are true."

-Erie Chapman

*The first painting is Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover "Surprise."
The second painting is Correggio (1489-1534) Holy Night.