Daily Word of Grace # 93 (July 23, 2020)
The moving Broadway musical Hamilton is about Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804). It includes a song called “Unimaginable” that is sung late in the play after Alexander Hamilton has been found out about his extramarital affair and after the death of his son Philip, who died in a duel just as Alexander himself would a few years later. This painful season endured by Alexander and his longsuffering wife Eliza is described: “There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable. The moments when you’re in so deep it feels easier to just swim down. The Hamilton’s move uptown and learn to live with the unimaginable.” And yet as awful as that season was for Alexander and Eliza, ultimately grace still won the day: “There is a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable. They are standing in the garden, Alexander by Eliza’s side. She takes his hand. It’s quiet uptown.” Odds are in your life you too have weathered “the unimaginable” in one way or another. And yet, that is where the grace of God wins the day: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Out of grace toward you on Good Friday Jesus endured unimaginable suffering, “suffering too terrible to name”, and even now the Risen Jesus comes along side you in the garden and quietly takes your hand to offer grace that is even more unimaginable.
Love and Prayers,
Dave