How Our "Saving" Takes Place

As lent blooms into Easter, we are very aware that we are being saved by God’s love. This is a fact. It’s right before our very eyes. The truth of the fact is one thing, but how it happens is another. We are not used to asking the how question, because it is asking for the explanation of functioning rather than the simple description of a fact of truth.

So let’s take a stab at it…let’s explore how we are saved by a magnificent Love. First, Love bends down. Bending is a function. Here is this poor Cinderella-soul, which finds itself in a drudgery state not of her choosing. Love bends down to her, and she “turns” at Love’s touch, her drudgery gone, and transformed into a princess in a party dress and at a “dance.” Locked in Love’s embrace, she follows Love’s lead on the dancefloor of her life. When she becomes “oh-so-tired-to-death,” Love sweeps her into its arms and carries her across the threshold into the safety of his Father’s “castle.”

Notice that even before bending down, Love sees her in her condition, and Loves her. Love starts everything off. Unable to get herself out of the condition she has inherited, Love bends to her. Love involves itself in her very wretchedness. Love bonds itself to her by touch. This transforms her. She becomes new, someone more than she was before, a new creation, clothed in a garment fit for a wedding. Love continues to involve itself in the dance of her life, holding her close. She dances “the night of her fears” away, held firmly by Love. As time passes toward the midnight of her life, she grows old in the dance. Love is ready. And when she collapses into Love’s arms, she leaves the dancefloor and is carried to “safety.”

Our saving is a process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The flow of that process originates in a Mystery Jesus called “Abba.” Jesus is the touch-of-God to a wounded human race. When he bonds with our flesh in the incarnation, God is revealed as I AM the One Who Saves. We are transformed. All this happens by an outflowing energy of compassionate mercy that we call the “Holy Spirit.” So the mystery of our saving is an ongoing function of a merciful unending Trinitarian Love. And our response? Well, for goodness sake! Say, “Yes!”

You reach out your hand

And it is a human hand just like mine.

My blindness is gone.

You reach out your hand

And my deadness departs.

You join me even in the tomb

And then leap up and sweep me away with you into the heights.

Saving Love, seal my love-yes in the fire of your Spirit flowing from your open heart.