When standing at the precipice of grace, we like to step back. For down there, in the grace, we fear lies death and destruction. But in that fear rests true life. We just have to be willing to give up on the judgment we currently cling to.
Paul wrote, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” [Romans 8:1 (ESV)].
When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was a superhero. I had a cape that my mom made for me and would fly around the yard under that majestic, clear, blue country sky with my arms stretched out like I was Superman. Those were the days of innocence. Now, I know I was really running and only had a towel on my back that had an elastic strap sewed on. Reality is often a downer.
At other times, I would attempt to use the force on a light switch to turn it off. Or I would try to turn on the sink with the force. I was never successful at using the force, but I had fun pretending. And many of us, kids growing up in the 80s, did those same things. That’s why the Super Bowl commercial with the kid pretending to be Darth Vader was so effective. Many of us who are of the age to buy cars ran around pretending to use the force as kids. We were superheroes.
But then real life caught up to us. We started noticing flaws in the way we looked. We started to recognize that others were better at some things than we were. And the superhero charade wore off. Reality crashed down. For some, that reality crashing became too much. That’s why suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-14 year olds. They’re learning to deal with their kryptonite for the first time, and their kryptonite is their own flaws and mortality, and, on those unfortunate and tragic times, kryptonite proves deadly.
Those flaws and disappointments are no reason to give up. We always have another dream waiting to be realized. I remember when I was most down in life and ready to give up. It only took about two hours with a friend, a Pepperoni Lover’s from Pizza Hut, and some Crash Test Dummies to figure out how to cope with things and to dream new dreams. It might not happen that quickly for some, but there is never a reason to give up. There is always hope in Jesus because there is no condemnation for the faults in your life when you are in him. The death of dreams is always tremendously tragic. It never gets easier. But it’s when those first dreams smash into broken shards and are impossible to put back together that we can fail to realize that there is another dream just waiting to be noticed.
Wake up, oh dreamer. There is another day. Another dream. There is grace for all our mistakes.
