Grace gives the lie to despair—something Frederick Buechner understood well. Buechner was a novelist and Presbyterian minister known for writing about faith with honesty, wit, and wonder. He once noted that most religious words have grown so shopworn, they barely register—except for grace. Grace, he wrote, “is something you can never get but can only be given. You can’t earn it—any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or bring about your own birth.”
The grace of God, in his words, means something like
"Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."
Only one thing is asked. “Like any other gift, grace makes sense only if you reach out and take it.”
It’s easier to do something than to receive it without explanation. Even the word gift can feel suspicious, like a debt hiding in the wrapping. There’s something disarming about the idea that nothing needs to be done. It cuts against everything learned from school, family, religion, or work. Most systems are built on effort and reward. Grace breaks that pattern. It doesn’t follow the rules. It gives what can’t be bought, and ruins the logic of exchange.
There’s also the problem of recognition. Grace often doesn’t come with a label. It might look like an interruption or a moment that slips by without notice. It might be someone showing up when least expected. Or silence without busy thoughts. Or release from something once believed essential. What looks like collapse may turn out to be relief. And what looks like a threat may actually be grace.
There's a tale often told of a man who, chased by a tiger, leaps off a cliff to escape. A tree growing from the cliffside breaks his fall. Dangling by one arm—tiger above, jagged rocks below—he yells, “Help! Somebody help me!” A voice responds, “Yes?” The man cries, “God, God, is that you?” Again: “Yes.” “I’ll do anything,” the man pleads. “Just please help me.” God says, “Okay then—just let go.” The man pauses, then calls out, “Is anyone else there?”
We merit the courage of our convictions only when we have the strength to part with them.
Hemingway called courage “grace under pressure.” Sometimes, though, the greater strength is simply accepting it. As Buechner puts it, “Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
A woman undergoing chemotherapy agrees to stop fighting the prognosis and spend her final months at home with her children—knowing she cannot extend her life, but she can choose how to live it. Or a couple, in the middle of divorce, sits through one last conversation—not to reconcile, but to speak plainly, without blame, for the first time in years.
Grace is recursive—it multiplies every time we take a breath. It’s about taking a deep breath before jumping to judgment. It can look like surrender, or silence, or two people telling the truth too late for it to change the outcome. Grace is about letting it in, and letting it out—and often about the courage to let go.
Notes and reading
René Magritte (1898–1967) was a Belgian surrealist painter known for unsettling images that challenge perception and hint at hidden meanings. The Unexpected Answer suggests a breach in the ordinary—an unforeseen opening where no passage seemed possible.
Frederick Buechner - Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABCs of Faith (2004). -
Ernest Hemingway - The term “grace under pressure” first gained notoriety in 1929 when Hemingway used the phrase in a New Yorker profile piece, "The Artist’s Reward," written by Dorothy Parker.
Story - “Just please help me. . .” from Radical Acceptance - Tara Brach (2004). Brach is an American psychologist, author, and Buddhist teacher who founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C.
["My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word. . . it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit." - Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint (pbk 2021). Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran minister and public theologian—an acclaimed mainline preacher—both traditional and maverick.]
Tip-Off #202 - After the Strongman
Tip-Off #201 - True comedy
.