I'd like to offer just a short thought today.
Richard Rohr writes in The Naked Now:
"Good theology always protects God's total freedom, and does not demand that God follow our rules. Jesus does this explicitly in John's Gospel several times: 'The spirit blows where it wills. You can hear and see it by its effects, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes" (3:8).
What does this mean? It means that the rules we make are not the rules that God follows. In fact, every time God forgives or shows mercy, God breaks the rules of justice and accountability. God steps outside our concepts of what should be.
This is what we call grace. In our world, we want a tit-for-tat universe. God does not follow this concept. The spirit of God flows where it wills, including letting the sun shine on the wicked as well as the righteous (though I doubt very much any of us are righteous), lets the rain come down on the just and the unjust. In fact, God's generosity is scandalously because it can be found even in the failure of sin. Simply put, there is no place left where God cannot be found!
So if God breaks the rules, what does that tell me? That the spirit of God flows where it wills. And who am I to judge that grace?
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