GRACE AT WORK

Fr Jim Cogley

By the age of 70 everyone is entitled to reflect back on their life journey and take the long view of what has been happening. For myself I am so grateful for knowing and seeing grace evident in every level of my life. By virtue of grace at work I have seen thousands of miracles, mind boggling co-incidences and amazing transformations. All of these have happened from a sense of co-operation with Spirit and certainly not from self-effort where I can claim any credit. I can now say with absolute honesty that whatever dreams or hopes I had for my life at 16 have been fulfilled a thousand times over. That does not mean that I have worked harder, prayed longer and earned a reward for years of diligence and commitment. Quite the opposite is the case. Somewhere in my distant past I learned a secret that worked - staying out of my own way and allowing God to be God.

Life tends to be like the game of golf, the lessons we are taught on the first day are the lessons we may still be learning on our last day, like head down and keep your eyes on the ball, swing slowly etc. Keeping the ‘I ‘out of the picture seems to be essential for living the life of grace. It is this ‘I’ or ego that trips us up in a myriad of ways and we need to find ways to prevent this from happening. It may begin with ‘I’ need to try harder, or ‘I’ need to improve, and we don’t even notice the ‘I’ in our belief. Then it may take the form of ‘I’ need to discern what God is asking of me, or ‘I’ am someone who has difficulty hearing the voice of God. To leave out the ‘I’ is to say, ‘Lord I can’t see but you can reveal’, or ‘I can’t hear but you can speak’. If we could succeed in any of these areas, we need to ask who would get the credit. The answer would be ‘I’, of course. So, a wonderful prayer for neutralizing the ego might be something like, ‘Lord, I can’t, but you can, and therefore I will.’

In my own spiritual journey learning ways to trick the ego and so keep out of my own way has been crucial. In the very act of surrender we find we can give only so much, say ninety five percent, but it is the five percent not given that undermines the rest. Here we can pray a deeper prayer, Lord, I surrender even what I can’t or am unwilling to let go of’, and so we experience grace bringing us to where we need to go. Similarly, when we hand over a problem or situation to the Lord, how many have discovered the tendency to take it back and resume worrying. Again, to counteract the ego a simple trick is to pray, ‘not just that I give you Lord this problem, but I also give you my innate tendency to take it back again’, and so we find ourselves held and sustained in the arms of grace.