I remember learning to swim in first year at secondary school. I don’t like chlorine, and I didn’t like taking my feet off the bottom. You never know, you might float towards the deep end, and I’ve never had long legs!
The PE teacher, who had previously played top flight football, was entirely unsympathetic, and he thought the most effective tone of encouragement was sarcasm and mockery. Even now, I rehearse what I might have said to him as an adult if I had met him in later life.
One thing he said though, which was true if only I could have believed it then, is that if you relax into the water, and breathe in, the natural buoyancy will keep you afloat. Eventually I discovered that rhythm of breathing and moving and away I went. I still don’t like chlorine, and swimming I can take or leave. But when I do go to the pool I enjoy lying on my back, floating. So you will see why it is I like ‘The Avowal’, a poem by Denise Levertov. Late in life she became a Christian, so she understands what we mean when we pray for the enabling grace of God:
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them;
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
What Levertov is teaching us, is what Paul wrote over and over again to the small, young Christian communities learning to swim in the deep water of a culture and society that was pagan and hostile to them. As the community of Christ we are borne by the buoyancy of the Spirit of God, held in the embrace of our Creator, and our lives are hid with Christ in God.
Trust and surrender are some of the most difficult, risky and rewarding experiences of our lives. By grace we are saved, through faith which is the gift of God. Faith is when we allow ourselves to be upheld by the God who will not let us fall. Faith is the risk of trusting God with all that matters most to us in our daily, sometimes messy human lives. Trusting faith isn’t some kind of special spiritual positive thinking. You can’t just work yourself up to believe and have faith. Levertov had read her Bible: “By grace you are saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Faith is when we stop trying to prove we have it all under control, and receive the gift of God’s grace, the surrounding, buoyant presence and power of the living Christ. You don’t have to exhaust yourself proving what you’re worth to others; your value is index linked to the cross of Christ and to the Eternal Love which comes to us in the grace of Christ.
We don’t have to find the resources within ourselves to believe more, or have more or stronger faith, as if faith itself was a work that could save us. God’s grace is sufficient for your weakness, and is richer than all your debts. The grace of God in Christ is generous enough to outbid the claims of our neediness, and patient enough to outlast our most persistent fears.
When Levertov writes about all-surrounding grace, in the background are some of the most powerful words Paul ever wrote to struggling Christians. They are worth reading carefully, prayerfully and gratefully. They describe the grace that surrounds us, upholds us, guides us, and guarantees our ultimate safety in Christ:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2.4-10)
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