The Currents Of His Grace

It was far past midnight. We stood, speaking with quiet, nearly hysterical intensity in the lighted doorway, Mrs. Sims, barefoot and in her night gown, short white hair rumpled about her drawn, tired face, and I, sunburned and pajamaed, exhausted from a day of teaching clubs. The conversation began with an offhand question, and suddenly became a bewildering torrent of only half realized ideas and concerns. The whole summer- no the past two summers seemed to have been building up to this point, to the things being said in this still room, in that sleeping house.

The phrase kept cropping up between us: "We just aren't REACHING them!"
The 'them' referred to was the kids we had been ministering to. The 'we' was CEF, and more specifically our 5 Day Club team for that week.
We talked for several hours that night. We continued to talk and pray over the next few weeks, as we kept on encountering situations that confirmed our convictions.

I won't try to write here about the happenings that precipitated this late night/early morning conference. I probably will never write about some of it, because, well, some things are very, very complicated. But to put it in a nutshell, we felt (and I am convinced that we are right) that many parts of the way we minister with CEF are unrealistic and ineffective- that change is imperative, and that the means for the beginnings of change are in our hands. We felt that we were seeing very little fruit in our ministry to the children, and that (I can only speak for myself here) it could largely be traced to an arrogant or lazy habit of prayerlessnes. I don't mean not praying at all, I mean praying half-heartedly, as a last-minute formality. Seeing the presence, and consequences of that sin in myself was heart-breaking. We also were concerned by the rigidity of the 5-day club material, and the fact that it was leaving devestating gaps in the understanding many Biblically illiterate (and sometimes wholly illiterate) children were piecing together of God. But we also realized, with a dawning wonder, that what we saw of the situation was not the whole, or even a fraction. Spiritual forces were at work in us, and in the hundreds of children contacted this summer, of which we are utterly unaware. We are terribly blind to God's working, to the wonders He performed beneath the deceptive surface of Appearance. Reality was progressing on a plane almost wholly out of our reach- a plane whose height and majesty we could never have dreamed of but for His mercy and graciousness.
I visualize it as a river, or perhaps a sea. When you stand within sight of a river, you can see its surface glimmering- perhaps guess at some of its currents by watching seams and whorls catch the light, but you really can't guess at all that's happening beneath its surface. Even by jumping in and attempting to swim it, you would only encounter a few of the currents and obstructions in a wild rush of sensation. You would have no clear idea of the whole, of all the hidden things in the water. Life is like that, and I clung to the image while I was teaching.

I also wrote this, after that late night discussion with Mrs. Sims:

'We are but tiny ripples on the surface of the sea. We appear a moment and vanish again in the eddying water. But beneath us are stirring great and mighty currents whose force we cannot fathom, and whose depth and power are beyond our farthest imaginings. We look about us at a physical world where spiritual pictures are barely traceable, and beyond the reach of our own nature. Our blurred sight, and prisoned brains strain toward the concept of majesty which is indescribable and inconceivable. On occasion we feel, oh so faintly, the power of the Spirit of God at work in us- but we cannot see it, touch it, or hear it. It is merely (gloriously!) an almost subconscious sensation, crashing in upon the dull little boundaries of our physical existence. It is a thing we can neither explain, nor create (in ourselves or others)
It is even more rarely that we are allowed to glimpse the action of God in someone else. And yet- and yet- when my own life seems as dry and infertile as a desert- when the hearts of those around me seem impenetrably hard, or hopelessly shallow, still, those great and mighty spiritual forces are working, somewhere, deep beneath the surface.
It is irrelevant that I cannot see them now. He Who emblazons all eternity with the story of His glory is faithful, and will show as much as is necessary of His depths. Until then, I must rest in the knowledge that my identity- the things I see, hear, and touch, are but ripples on the surface of His sea- that my deepest knowledge hardly reaches the shallowest beginnings of His majesty and grace.'

What a truth to exult in! I put the idea into a poem a few weeks later, after driving over the Missouri river at sunset:

The river poured in mellow fire
Its sunset broadness round the bend.
On either side, the hills rose up
In swinging treetops; at the end
A wide horizon swelled to meet
A landscape like a rumpled sheet-

A sheet of darkly ruffled leaves,
And water spreading in an arc
Of shining gold, and silver whorls
That glimmer through the creeping dark-
The river's shining surface hides
Strange depths of darker things besides.

So much of life is darker still
Than that which grapples far below
The molten river's gleaming face-
Things swim there that I cannot know
By watching here upon a bridge
Or long black outline of a ridge.

And currents move and work unseen
Mere ripples show a mighty gain-
Deep sludge is stirred, and ancient bones,
Beneath the dimpling of the rain;
My wavering vision strains to trace
The deeper currents of Thy grace!
Where work Thy Spirit, and Thy Word?
Enough to know Thou workest, Lord.