Mirrors of Dangerous Grace

Lent. Ashes. Sin. Grace. Four words rattling around my head these days. This week at our local Mom to Mom we had a poignant leaders’ devotional about Ash Wednesday—complete with a small jar of ashes before us.  A stark reminder of our sin and death. And our need for God’s grace.

In his wonderful Lenten devotional Reliving the Passion, Walter Wangerin calls it dangerous grace. Yes, I am reading this devotional again this year; like an old friend, it becomes more precious with each visit.  And in this Lent 2020, I remember reflecting on his words a few years ago . . .

Wangerin points out that one of the reasons for reliving the Passion of our Lord during Lent is that it helps us to see our sin.  He talks about how his relationship with his wife becomes a mirror in which he can see, when he sins against her, the suffering his sin has caused.   A mirror that hides nothing and breaks through his denials and excuses. He calls it a mirror of dangerous grace.

Nothing has revealed my sinfulness and need of a Savior like being a mom. Parenting my children showed me aspects of myself that I never knew were there--and didn’t like much! I never knew, for example, that I had a problem with anger until I had kids. In my teacher-life, I’d had plenty of students that pushed my buttons. But never the way my 2-year-old or 10-year-old children could. 

When I apologize to my children, as I’ve had to do countless times, and receive their forgiveness, I am reminded of my need to confess to God and be forgiven. And I learn what the freedom of forgiveness feels like.

So we moms have plenty of opportunity on a daily basis to look in the faces of our families and see mirrored there our need for the grace that is offered in our Lenten journey. In this season we travel with Jesus the rugged road toward the cross—and beyond that, the glory of the empty tomb. Though we are reminded that, as Martin Luther said, “we carry his nails in our pockets,” we also experience His grace at the foot of the cross.  And His glorious forgiveness.

Thanks be to God!