Understanding Grace

I'm sure someone will post a comment to this post with an undertone of "huh, how could you not understand Grace?". Nevertheless, I don't.

The longer God grants me grace to live, the less I understand the grace, I have to this point received. It would seem that the weight of Grace and the potential for guilt and shame, as a result of the realization of Grace waisted, would increase congruent to the amount of time spent on earth. I find it easier to fall to my knees and beat my chest for my own arrogance, regarding the quantity of time waisted, not resting in God's Grace. The time I have spent forcefully and painfully directing my own life path.

In some ways this thought is extremely liberating. I'm learning to understand Grace for what it is. Incomprehensible. On the other hand, I am debilitated by the compounded realization that I am incapable of embracing the incomprehensible. I am then ashamed. Somewhere, I lost my child-like ability to accept the unseen, the unknowable. I'm not quite sure when it happened. Jeremiah, the prophet, gets a message from God for Israel. He's supposed to extol them for falling away from God. He tells them something to the effect: The road out is the road back.

If we are to understand Grace, it is absolutely necessary, to lay aside all our ideas about the conceivable. And yet, I can conceive it! I do. My son, my son. It's you! I have known this all along, but even still the thought rings like being kicked in the ear. Last week I met Grace, today I have met her still. To understand her is another thing, but my son I wish no ill will.