Wrestling With an Angel
May 4, 2010
Now and then I like to alert you to things that I find personally compelling. The weblog called Wrestling With an Angel falls into that category. The subtitle tells you all you need to know: “Lessons in the life of a father learned through the struggles of his disabled son.” Greg Lucas is a police officer in a small town in West Virginia. His seventeen-year-old son Jake has the mental capacity of a 2 year old.
In his latest entry he wrestles with a heart-rending question, How Will My Son Be Saved? While some people deal with this question on a purely theoretical basis (“What about those who lack the ability to accept or reject Christ?”), as a father he lives with it every day. He comes to this conclusion:
I have poured over God’s promises like a doctor searching for a cure of the deadly disease in his own child, looking for hope and confidence in this grey area of my son’s life. There are many passages that give hints to the question I pose, but in the end I believe the passage in Ephesians 2 brings the most peace to my own soul—that Jake’s state is really no different from my own.
We are both separated from God by sin, in desperate need of a savior, and even if it is faith that appropriates our salvation, this faith is not our own doing—it is the gift of God. So that in the end our boast and our only hope is in the mysterious, amazing grace of God.
I commend the blog to you as worthy of your careful reading. Here is true faith at the jagged edge of life, still alive, still holding on, and seeing God’s grace at work where others see only tragedy.