“Ted Engstrom insightfully writes: “Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that the doctors say he'll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham -- who set the world's one mile record in 1934. Deafen him and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver. Call him a slow learner, "retarded," and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.”
JOURNAL
The more I think about M. Scott Peck’s discussion of grace in The Road Less Traveled, the more amazing it becomes. We spend so much of life looking for formulas. If I exercise, eat right, prepare, work hard, pray, make good decisions, and discipline myself, then surely I can produce the outcome I want. All of those things matter, and much of Peck’s book is about discipline and personal responsibility. But then he comes to grace, and grace reminds us that the formula is never complete.
There is simply so much we cannot explain. The human body can be unbelievably resilient. Bones heal, wounds close, muscles rebuild, and even the brain can sometimes create new pathways after tremendous injury. Yet that same body can be incredibly vulnerable. One person survives something that seemingly should have killed him while another is devastated by something that appeared relatively minor. One person emerges from terrible suffering stronger, wiser, and more loving, while another struggles to recover. We can explain parts of this through biology, genetics, psychology, medicine, environment, and neuroplasticity, but eventually we reach the edge of our understanding.
And maybe that is where grace begins.
Peck describes grace as something operating beyond our conscious will that seems to encourage human beings toward growth, healing, and spiritual development. The stories Ted Engstrom tells of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Beethoven, Einstein, and so many others remind me of this. Their suffering did not guarantee greatness, because there is no formula saying adversity plus perseverance equals victory. Rather, there seems to be something mysterious within life that can transform weakness into strength, suffering into meaning, and brokenness into something beautiful.
I call that mystery. God.
This does not make discipline less important. It puts discipline in its proper place. I am still called to work, prepare, solve problems, care for my body, love people, pursue excellence, and swing the hammer. But I cannot command the rock to break. I can participate fully in life without pretending that I control it.
Maybe that is also the secret to living in the present. I don't have to understand tomorrow or guarantee an outcome. I am responsible for what is in front of me today. I can work today, love today, serve today, forgive today, and trust God today. Then I can surrender everything beyond that.
There are simply too many things about existence that I cannot explain: the resilience and vulnerability of our bodies, the adaptability of our brains, consciousness, courage, love, healing, suffering, and transformation. Science can explain many of the mechanisms, but every answer seems eventually to lead to another question. At some point I arrive at mystery.
Peck calls it grace. I call it God.
Perhaps faith is becoming comfortable standing at the edge of what I can understand and no longer needing to see beyond it. I do my part faithfully and surrender the rest.
MATTHEW 5:3-10
