I’ve recently been thinking about some very big topics and it is obvious to me that my reach exceeds my grasp. Despite my attempts at learning more about my place in this world, I find myself all too often grasping at straws and finding only questions. One such example of this is the concept of grace. Although I cannot remember where I heard it, I’ll always remember someone once said, “grace is a gift you cannot repay.” This has been one of the most formative ideas for me in the past couple of years.

Almost two years ago I took a job as a Nurse Tech because I needed a summer job that could begin to pay for a certain out-of-state private university. I wound up on the Critical Care Unit of my local hospital and it was there that I was made aware of a much larger worldview. I met many people on different paths who were each a part of a grand operation of healing. I met Grace, an Italian immigrant, Dan, and three Kathy’s as well as many other dedicated RN’s.

I get asked all the time, “So what do you do?” Unfortunately the answer isn’t brief and isn’t conducive to holding a social conversation. Instead, it’s lengthy and it’s personal. It is best described in my experiences while working. There are two sides to the Critical Care Unit and there have been nights when I am responsible for both sides. One night while I was on the East side the operator announced a Code Blue on the West side. This signals for all available doctors, respiratory technicians and nearby nurses to help with the situation. I of course ran to the other side and found that our terribly ill mother was giving birth nearly eleven weeks early. To make the story short, it was then that I saw a child born into Grace’s hands and promptly whisked away to the delivery ward of the hospital with a team of doctors.

I have been privileged to experience many other stories that, even though they are vastly different, all hold a common theme. I have been able to help people when they were rendered helpless with disease. I’ve seen men and women return to the floors with cards and flowers to thank the nurses for helping them get better. I have also seen people die several times. One would think that this would be a terrible experience but instead I see the pastors and friends that come to pray and the family that surrounds this person in his or her most vulnerable moment. I have seen that there are many ways that God can heal.

From my experience I have begun to believe that there are many unseen workings that Nazarene’s would assign to the Holy Spirit and that the Church is in agreement with this. The triune God is in the business of making things right. As Dr. Van Heemst has said in class, “God is at work healing this world.” It is marvelous to think that God could be using each and every one of us to heal this world; that we may be all be a form of grace to another person. I was the one that brought the news of the baby’s health and safety not only to the staff but also to the mother. Hers was a pink, healthy newborn boy and his life had just begun.

But is there any quantitative evidence for such an idea? It seems that the many forms of grace as a concept are difficult to define generally, difficult to pinpoint specifically and therefore difficult to write about for any length. Nevertheless, I stand by what I have to say until shown otherwise. First, the systems of God are simply not easily understood by humanity. If there was one thing that Professor Maxson would have had me take from his Christian Doctrine course it is that God is radically free. God is able to operate in whatever way is chosen because of this aspect of His nature.

Second, God seeks to make this world righteous. He operates within renewal and resurrection in order to make things right. (Psalms 104:30) This reconciliation of all things comes from Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:11) In Protestantism our seeking to be more Christ-like falls under the umbrella of justification and sanctification. In his sermon, Free Grace, John Wesley spoke, saying “The grace or love of God, whence cometh our salvation, is free in all, and free for all... It does not in anywise depend either on the good works or righteousness of the receiver; not on anything he has done, or anything he is.” Within the Wesleyan-Armenian tradition we have accepted what I am attempting to touch as “prevenient grace.” Within the Nazarene definition of prevenient, or preventive, grace there lays a helplessness to resist its advances. On the subject of the fall of man, Armenius wrote, “We always and on all occasions make this grace to precede, to accompany and follow; and without which, we constantly assert, no good action whatever can be produced by man. Concerning Grace and Free Will, this is what I teach according to the Scriptures and orthodox consent: Free Will is unable to begin or to perfect any true spiritual good, without Grace." I have found that Calvanism, on the other hand, has termed this “efficacious” grace, literally, grace that produces a desired effect.

“Sanctification is a process through which the remains of sin in the outward life are gradually removed, so that, as the Shorter Catechism says, we are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness.” (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination) God seeks for all of us to be sanctified at some point. Jesus seeks that all his disciples be sanctified. (John 17:17-19) In John 6:44 Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” (NIV) It stands to reason that God could guide us to Him by means of a system of right-making grace.

I see the vocabulary for such an ever-present healing machine of grace apparent in Catholicism as well. The Catechism says, “Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers in the divine nature and eternal life." (#1996)

But what of our participation in this grace? How active is this so-called prevenient grace? In writing about the bigger picture, the Kingdom of God, Jurgen Moltmann says, “What is the kingdom of God? It is nothing other than God’s joy at finding again the beings he created who have been lost. And what is the ‘repentance’ which the sinner has to ‘perform’? It is nothing other than the being-found, and the return home from exile and estrangement, the coming alive again, and the joining in God’s joy.” (Jesus Christ For Today’s World, 12) I posit that a component of the draw toward sanctification is derivative of this system of grace that we are all part. Our role within this system of grace is simply to be found. The efforts taken in this cannot be our own. Again, it is God that saves and reconciles. It is from Him that we receive. (1Chronicles 28:18)

I find all of this to be significant for several reasons. First, it leaves me with an ecumenical taste in my mouth. This is not only within the Church but outside of it as well. God loves each person that we meet on and off of this campus. His grace is “free for all” because “we are precious in His sight.” Second, how might this conceptualization of grace affect my view of my neighbor? Who do we become and what are they to us when each person we meet could bring us closer to what God would have us be? Perhaps we can be used as an instrument to make things more just? Third, this is a view that eschews the hopelessness that seems so easily acquired these days. Rather, it recognizes that God is sovereign and ultimately in control. I am his to find.

These people that I have met these past two years; they are part of the night shift in the Critical Care Unit. I don’t think that they would mind my confession that they have been my examples of grace. It is in their nightly diligence that they, in some small way, heal a piece of the world. Whether they know it or not, I am pretty sure the nurses in CCU are actively participating in God’s plan. They are making things right. I’m just glad that I was graced; that I have been there. That is a gift I cannot repay.