The Curse as Grace

I’ve always thought of the Curse as … a curse. (duh)

Nothing is easy … everything worth doing takes so much agonizing work.

We were driving into Greenville the other night discussing life and its difficulties, and Coart commented that the Curse is actually Grace.  It holds us accountable for our sinfulness. It limits the amount of damage humans can do (even sinning takes work).  We are sanctified by this struggle against the groanings of creation.  Little else really is effective against our nature.

Apart from the violent Grace that is the Curse, we would not understand the depths of our ingrained sin.

Everything is hard because everything about me is screwed up.
Sin is a perversity — a twistedness that only God can un-twist.

Flannery O’Connor’s shocking moments of self-revelation for her characters are an artistic picture of the slaps-in-the-face we receive from Life in this broken world.  I often say with a bitter laugh that irony, not love, “makes the world go ’round.”  Flannery’s stories write that theme large. Apart from painful (and Gracious) self-revelation, I would never see myself for what I am — a sinner in great need of rescue.

“Hosanna!” = “Save now!”