And then there’s that thing about the unforced rhythms of grace. I love this phrase so much. It’s so simple in its wording, yet so profound in meaning.
Rhythm can’t exist without rules. This implies some sort of force to make the rules work.
Music has time rules. It has melodic rules. It has pitch rules. It has all kinds of rules. And there’s even a tool called a metronome to help keep rhythm’s rules.
This is easily understood. We don’t tap our feet quickly to a slow song or dance slowly holding our sweeties when Uptown Funk comes on. It’s just not done.
And here we’re presented by God with a grace that has no rules, no boundaries, no top, no bottom, no conformity to anything we can understand.
And as this grace has no boundaries, also the rest has no boundaries. It’s certainly not confined to a specific day. It invades and pervades every moment of our being. THIS rest, like no other, becomes a part of our fiber and demands we chill in Christ.
And as we are challenged to unlearn the power habits that threaten our existence, we are challenged to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
Grace has its own nature, its own color, its own multiplicities and it confounds even us who have been saved by it and continue to exist in the family of God because of it. It’s a wonder to my soul and such a tremendous gift that I expect we’ll be glimpsing God’s feet in glory before we have the slightest idea of what it really is.
What I know is this. Once we’ve really gotten a hint of it…let me change that.
Let me testify a minute. I am a child of God’s grace and just the thought of it makes me smile from the depth of my being. It overwhelms me to know how precious I am in the sight of God and that nothing and no one can pluck me out of His heart or His hand.
So rest. I love it. It’s a gift. It gives me time and space to become more familiar with myself.
Dorothy Scott Boulware 