This week we take our ninth and final step along the path of the prophetic tradition. Richard Rohr in his book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, reminds us that the prophet Ezekiel (perhaps one of the most quirky and eccentric prophets we have read) begins in usual prophetic fashion with anger but then turns to one of the clearest expressions of grace in the Hebrew Scriptures: namely, the people receiving a “new heart and new spirit” as a gift from God with no strings attached. As Rohr says:
“All grace is prevenient grace—the kind that makes you desire or want grace to begin with! Grace is not what we deserve by doing the right things, but rather a gift freely given by the Creator in the very act of creation, even if we do not yet believe in its source. Knowing the source somehow just makes it easier to keep saying Thank you. As such, grace is, strangely, a punishment for the ego, which always wants to believe in payments and punishments, a concept we unfortunately got from religion itself.” – Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things, pp. 132-33
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