Grace for Today

God is love,

and those who abide in love abide in God,

and God abides in them.

—1 John 4:16

My mother cross-stitched the guardian angel prayer that hung over my bed when I was a child. Being a good little Catholic girl, I prayed that prayer every night. Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side to light, to guard, to rule, and guide. Amen.

The word that always gave me pause was “rule.” It sounded so harsh coming after “guard.” How could God’s love be both protective and tyrannical?

By the time I reached middle school, my impression of God and his angels had morphed into an army that could rival the Gestapo. To instill fear in his people, God used his guardian angels to assess every move made by humans to find evidence of commandments being broken. Where necessary, an angel would dole out the proper punishment. 

No one taught me to believe this. I concluded this all on my own, based on my perpetual feeling of guilt that was reinforced by the requirement to confess my sins to a priest every week or two. Even when I had already been punished by my parents for any wrongdoing, I still had to share my mistake with a priest and receive penance.

At both school and home, judgement and discipline were doled out freely and regularly. One of Dad’s old leather belts was draped across the telephone that hung on the wall in the kitchen. (Remember those wall phones? Ours was black.) The belt served as a visual reminder that pain would be inflicted if one of us kids didn’t obey the rules. The belt was rarely used, but the mere threat of it hanging there within Dad’s reach was enough to scare us kids into obedience.

Fear may be an effective deterrent, but it doesn’t motivate meaningful change. In fact, fear of being judged and condemned helped to make me a better liar not a better person.

I faithfully attended church services all through college, but after I graduated, I moved to New York City and stopped going to mass altogether. With no one to hold me accountable, I was able to do as I pleased—and boy, did I do as I pleased! When Mom asked where I was attending church, I lied—and I lied well.

I may have deceived my mother, but not God. Psalm 139:7-8 says, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” God heard every single one of my lies, and I knew it. I’d like to tell you that I went running to him, begging his forgiveness, but I didn’t. Yet.

It took a bad marriage followed by divorce to drive me back to God. Broken and ashamed, I enrolled in my first Bible study in the hopes of discovering what steps I needed to take to be redeemed. That was when I first heard about God’s grace—His forgiveness, love, and acceptance based on our faith in Jesus Christ, not on good works. “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 2:8–10). I couldn’t earn my way into God’s good graces; it was a free gift for all believers who came to him in love.

Grace made no sense to me. I deserved punishment and penance. Grace did not align with my perception of God as an angry judge to be feared. Did I have it wrong?

The apostle John wrote, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

It took several years of study and prayer to dismantle the image I had of God as a vengeful judge with his arms crossed looking at me in disdain. These days, I see him as a loving Father with arms open wide and joy on his face. I still mess up, but instead of making excuses or lying about my actions, I go to God with a penitent heart knowing I am perfectly loved—and so are you.

SHARING A FAVORITE SONG: Perfect Love by Jeremy Camp

Favorite lyric: “And I'm thankful for this suffering 'cause it's brought me right here on my knees. If perfect love casts out fear, then here I am Lord, drawing near.”