“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:30-32, NIV)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lives in the memory of people around the world. We Americans celebrate his dedication to civil rights and nonviolence, a contribution deeply rooted in his personal faith. In Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, he confessed a time when God was little more than an interesting philosophical debate. That changed; he experienced God personally, and the reality of God’s presence was evident in the struggle in which he engaged. He wrote, “In the midst of the outer dangers I have felt an inner calm and known resources of strength that only God could give.” His witness echoes others who passionately sought the Lord, discovering a gracious God.
Bernard of Clairvaux adds: “If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise, the starting point is this—God is…What is God? He is almighty will moved by loving kindness, virtue, eternal light, incommunicable reason, highest blessedness; He is the creator of minds to enjoy Himself; He endows them to long for Him, justifies them to be worthy of Him, fires them with zeal, fertilizes them that they may bear fruit, molds them to loving kindness, regulates them for wisdom, strengthens them for virtue, visits them for consolation, illuminates them for knowledge, preserves them for happiness, is about their path for safety.” Bernard renders this description of graciousness personally: “How often has the prayer begun, almost despairing of salvation, sent me back, full of joy and confident of pardon.”
Brother Bernard further locates graciousness with those journeying with a “stranger” on the Road to Emmaus: “a Fellow-traveler whose conversation so rejoices them and takes away their weariness that, when he goes, they say, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us when he talked to us along the way?’ He deals thus in His compassion with souls whose hearts are weary of spiritual exercises, who have grown dry and sad and turned back on the things of time. He who is from heaven meets us, when we are like this, on our way, and begins to speak of heaven, to sing some lovely song of Zion to us, or tell us of the endless peace that obtains ever in the City of God.” Five centuries before Martin Luther King, the Protestant reformer Martin Luther wrote, “I am seeking, searching, thirsting for nothing else than a gracious God.” Both found God to be gracious, seeking us even before we seek him.
Moment of Reflection: Do you expect God to be gracious with you?
Prayer: Ever-seeking God, hone my recognition that I cannot depend on my own resources. Amen.
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