Hearing Something New

A friend of mine who is part of the deaf community has been learning the song Amazing Grace for a special event, and we were having a conversation about the song and the way that she will be signing. The other people who were part of the conversation are all very knowledgeable in things that are spiritual and also with language and translating and communicating. I was very moved by our conversation because there were so many things that came up about that song and how difficult –or maybe impossible – it is for someone who has not had the experience of salvation to understand that song completely. Signing is a very beautiful language that is a language all its own. There is nothing that I can really compare it to. My friend is very knowledgeable about the history of signing and is very particular in how she decides to express herself. She is also very deeply spiritual, and watching her sing the song is a rare and beautiful experience. When she spoke about the meaning of the words for her, the emotion shone in her eyes and there was a glow over her face that can only come from the Spirit of God.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.” Those words are easy in any language I think, at least on the surface. It’s when we get to the part about saving a wretch like me that we get caught up in something that may or may not sit well with us. When we discussed the song, I shared how it was only after I was born again that I understood the song and loved it – before that I had never liked it at all. The idea of calling myself a wretch – the idea that anyone would sing a song and call themselves a wretch – that was something weird and strange and not at all appealing. But after I was born again, when I knew what a wretch I had been and could easily be again, that was when I really understood the amazing grace that had saved me from myself.

“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Those words, too, seem easy, but after I was saved, they became glorious and miraculous. In our conversation, my friends were talking about how they had decided on the sign for blind – they had not chosen the usual sign for blind, but one that shows that before she was blind in the way that she couldn’t see God, but now she can see Him and all things reflected in His glory. Another friend of mine who is an Episcopal Priest has said to me that there are people who can see but who are blind, and who can hear but who can’t hear. I was like that before I was born again – I have 20/20 vision and what is considered perfect hearing, but without the amazing grace of God, I could not see or hear anything really. All of my sensory experiences were covered over by a mask or a film, a haze that was dark enough to hide anything that was truly joyful or filled with love. After I was born again, when God first sent me to work in an after school program in the Projects on the lower east side of NYC, the first day I arrived, I said, "Lord, what are you doing?" All I could see around me was dirt and filth and garbage and poverty and misery. How could I in my broken and needy state bring anything positive to a place like that? But He answered, "Don't look with your eyes, look with mine," and as I walked with Him in that place, I experienced love and joy and beauty in a way I had never known before.

When my friends began talking about the sign for being lost and found – that was when I had to get into the conversation. Before that I had just been listening, but there are times when the Spirit will say you have to say something, and you do. The conversation was around the idea of what was the meaning of being lost. My friend was signing searching and lost, and someone suggested that there needed to be something else because it was a concept that even in the spoken word was difficult to understand. What are we lost from, where are we lost, how are we lost? What if we don’t know that we’re lost? Before I was born again, the idea of being lost meant only that I didn’t know where I was going on a map when I was driving or walking in a place I didn’t know. When I was a very young child, a toddler, just old enough to walk, I remember getting lost once in a hospital – my family was there, and somehow I got disconnected from them and ran screaming until somebody picked me up and I was found again. It seemed like an eternity, but it may have lasted only an instant. That is the closest I can come to the feeling of salvation, that moment when you are found and those arms are around you and the fear is gone. The difference is in the moment before – when I was a child I knew I was lost, when I was an adult, I didn’t know until I was found.

“T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace that fear relieved.” How can that make sense to someone who has not known that grace? It seems a paradox – how can we learn fear and be relieved of fear by the same power that taught it to us? It doesn’t make any sense in the natural world. But God’s ways do not make sense to us sometimes if we look with our natural eyes – seeing we do not see until we begin to look with new eyes. To know the fear of God is to truly know the love of God. When I realized His power and His might and I realized how far I was living away from the way that He wanted me to live, I realized what a wretch I was, and in that realization, I knew a greater love than any I had ever known or could ever know. I was a misbehaving child, not a good and loving one, but a willful and stubborn and troublesome one, and yet He still lifted me up in His arms and shut all the fear away.

“How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” How precious and lovely and loving. In an instant my eyes were opened, and I understood. There is no way to explain that moment to anyone, it is something so deeply personal and unique to each of us. One moment we’re running scared, not even aware of how we got to where we are, not knowing how to get back to where we want to be, then the arms scoop us up and we’re safe. And the best news of all is that those arms are big enough to hold the world. They are big enough to hold each one of us in the way we need to be held, and they are loving enough to hold us even when we haven’t known how to love ourselves.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan