Eyes Transfixed

Grace begins like a flicker in a dark place. In your moment of weakness, or perhaps even suffering, when you don’t know where to turn, suddenly there it is. Unwarranted and unexpected, there’s a spark of hope, favor, and blessing glimmering like gold embedded in the darkest stone.

Your eyes become transfixed as you gaze at that light. The hope, the warmth, and the clarity it brings is, in a strange way, changing you – transforming you. As the light becomes brighter, your path becomes more apparent, and suddenly you find yourself awakened to a world of peace, grace, and love, where dreams are lived out every day.

My words are deliberately more mystical when I speak of grace because I have discovered that grace is not a formula, an intellectual set of facts, or something that can be taught or fathomed by a rational mind. Instead, that mind will either reject it outright or bring it under the domain of the false self (the fear-driven ego) that seeks to control people and situations to feel secure, significant, and accepted.

From such fear-driven egocentricity, religions and their political institutions develop systems with a binary god. But no church, mosque, or temple can control grace. No guru, pastor, or prophet can master it. No teacher, book, or blog can adequately describe it.

Like a hidden treasure, grace can only be found. Appearing in your moment of need, when all hell breaks loose, and when you are at the end of yourself, grace appears in the depth of your inner being as a glow that radiates an unexplainable beauty. As you continue to gaze at its brilliant light, it becomes the gift that keeps on giving. Favor and blessing effortlessly flow in and through you, turning dreams into reality.

While greed seeks to accumulate because of the whispering fear that sees the world through the lens of scarcity, grace sees the universe for what it is – an endless, limitless, infinite possibility that only seeks to give. So keep your eyes open because grace is near and looking for you. When you see this incredible gift, you awake to your true self.

Adapted from David Youngren, Beyond Limits