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Grace

Ryan Dueck

Grace. Over the last several months, this is a word that has become quite personal to me, a word that I think I might just have begun to understand. About two-and-a-half months ago, my wife Naomi and I adopted twins, a boy and a girl, and our lives were turned upside down.

In many ways, our lives are quite typical of couples who embark on the journey of parenthood for the first time – busy, chaotic, sometimes frustrating, more often delightful. It has felt very strange for me to become a father of two so quickly. Naomi had a lot of experience with children due to the fact that she spent the last four-and-a-half years working with babies at a daycare, but I am pretty much a novice when it comes to being a dad. I guess it is that way for most guys, but for me it was even more of a shock. To go from not even knowing we were going to be parents to having two babies in a matter of days was an experience that both of us will never forget.

I have learned a lot from these two little people who have so wonderfully invaded my life. I have thought a lot about what their lives would have been like if they had not been given to us, but more and more I have found myself thinking about the many other children who were not given to us. This probably sounds ridiculous; after all, shouldn’t I just have been thankful for the fact that we were given two healthy babies? Yet, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about the children who would not be given the chance for a better life. Why do some get that chance while others are forced to grow up in deplorable surroundings, with little or no prospects of improvement? And who decides their fate? Certainly not they. They have no say whatsoever in the matter – and this has been the greatest source of my frustration. It’s one thing for a person to pay a price for poor decisions that he or she has made, but it seems that more and more often children are being made to suffer for decisions that they never even had the opportunity to make. The world is full of unwanted children and of people who have learned to live without love as a result of the way that they were raised. I am grateful to God that we have the opportunity to make things better for Claire and Nicholas, but I can’t help but think of the thousands who never get picked, who seemingly have no chance in life from the day they are born until the day that they die. The arrival of Claire and Nicholas into my life has made me think even more about the millions of children around the world who have no one to love them. It seems so miserably unfair to me, and the apparent randomness of life is something that I have really struggled with. Many people have told Naomi and me that Claire and Nicholas are “so lucky to have parents like you”. Is that all it is? Luck? Chance? And if Claire and Nicholas really are lucky to have been brought into our lives, then are all of the children who were not given that chance just unlucky? Sometimes these are very difficult questions for me to answer, or even to begin to get my mind around.

I do not believe that it is simply a coincidence that Claire and Nicholas have entered our lives – there is far too much evidence to the contrary – but the fact remains that for every child that is given a better home, there are far more that are not. What am I to make of this? What are we to make of the fact that sometimes the events of this life seem too haphazard to logically point to a God who loves and has a plan for each person He has created? Tragedy and suffering seem to strike at random, and sometimes it seems virtually impossible to make any sense of it all or to believe passages like Matthew 10:30, which confidently declares that “the very hairs of your head are all numbered”, or Jeremiah 29:11, which states “I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” How assuredly could I recite those verses to a child who has not known love from the day he was born?

These were the kinds of things that were bouncing around my head the other day when I came across these words in Romans: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For He says to Moses: ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ It does not, therefore, depend on a person’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. . . . One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists His will?’ But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:14-16, 19-20). Paul was not speaking directly about the things that I have been talking about, but I believe that his words still apply. Who are we to talk back to God and say, “Why did You make me like this?” or “Why do things seem so wretchedly unfair?” That is the sort of accusation that Paul was responding to. The Jews were annoyed that all of a sudden God was allowing Gentiles into the Kingdom when it was the Jews who were the chosen ones! It was just not fair! The same kind of questions arise when we read the story of Job. How could so much suffering and calamity be imposed on one man? It just does not seem fair! God’s response is not exactly the one that I would have wanted to hear. He basically gives Job a good lesson on who is really in charge and who is speaking out of ignorance. Both in Paul’s rebuttal to the Jews and in God’s thunderous response to His servant Job, the lesson is the same and could probably be summed up in one sentence: “I am God, and that is enough for you.”

There will be many things in this life that are unfair, wrong and just plain evil. Sometimes my temptation is to just throw my hands up in the air and say, “Why God? This doesn’t make any sense!” – even though deep in my heart I know why things are the way they are. Sin has forever altered the landscape of human experience, and even though I know this in my mind, it is a different thing to come to grips with it in my own life. Naomi and I never imagined that when the time came for us to have a family, things would not work out the way that we thought they would. This is not how God wanted things to be. God never intended for people to have problems having children, just as He never intended for children to be born to people who had no interest in raising them, or to grow up in environments completely devoid of love and compassion.

Sin has muddied the waters and complicated things tremendously, but there are still nuggets of grace to be mined out of the mountain of tragedy and hopelessness. The fact that things are not as they should be does not mean that we can just say, “Well, why bother with any of it?” Even though Naomi and I never imagined that this would be the way that we would arrive at parenthood, we can both honestly say that we feel tremendously blessed by the way God has arranged things in our lives, perhaps even more than if things had happened the way that we assumed they would. The lesson that I am trying to learn is the same one that is outlined in God’s response to Job: It is His prerogative. We are the created, and He is the Creator. He says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” This has to be good enough for me, for us.

Through the process of adopting children, I have gained a greater appreciation of what it means to be an adopted child of God, and almost certainly a deeper understanding of the word “grace”. There is a song by U2 called “Grace” that says, “Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.” Most people would probably consider the fact that Naomi and I could not have our own biological children an ugly thing, but grace has found a way to make it beautiful. Claire and Nicholas came from what most people would probably call an ugly situation, but grace has made beauty out of it, for Naomi and me, and for them. They did not do anything to deserve their fate. They were simply chosen by God to be instruments of grace to us, just as we were chosen to be instruments of grace to them. In the same way, none of us have ever done or will ever do anything to deserve to be called children of God. None of us earned it. It is grace, plain and simple. Jesus’ death and resurrection, that unfathomable gesture of grace and mercy, have provided the only criterion necessary for us to be adopted into the family of God. Grace makes beauty out of ugly things. The sin of humanity is perhaps the ugliest thing of all, yet grace has touched the human condition and somehow made it beautiful again. It certainly may not appear to be beautiful at times – in fact, sometimes it can look downright hideous – but we have a hope and a confidence that one day it will be as God intended it to be. Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.

Ryan Dueck is a member of Coaldale (Alta.) MB Church. This article is based on a devotional given in that church.

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Last modified November 30, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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