One of my earliest childhood memories is me in a Superman suit "flying around" saving damsels in distress and the world from impending destruction. I think I may have been around four or five. I may have been twenty-five because I've had so many tell me I never grew up...that may be true....Anyway, I loved pretending to be the "big guy"! And only one who could save the day better than him was me.
To this day I love Superman and wish I had just a touch of his invulnerability. Because the "S" on his chest is also the beginning letter of my last name, I always thought of him as a relative from a distant planet. Believe me if you met some of my relatives you would think they came from a distant planet or two!....so Superman wouldn't be any different....just more sane. I'm sure some of my relatives would fall into the bizarro category.
Superman is the ultimate superhero. Always fighting for truth, justice, and the American way (that's because his rocket ship landed in America, if it landed in say...Korea, would he fight for the Korean way?....just asking). Everything he does is right and with just cause. His motivation is without prejudice, and it isn't tainted by selfish gain. His first thought is others....their well being, their safety, their quality of life. There are no grey areas in his thinking when it comes to decerning right from wrong. I always wondered how he pulled that off. Maybe his thinking is as invulnerable as his strength.
He is a figure that is recognized the world over. A super-icon if you will. And what he represents is known the world over as well. Superman is the ultimate perfect man in a totally imperfect world. The world needs a man like that, a superman if you will.
At age 6, after I jumped off a chicken barn in Arkansas thinking I could fly like Superman, I fell head first into a cow patty below.....at that point, I began to re-think growing up and becoming the next Superman. I discovered, and painfully so, that I couldn't defy gravity. Reality is this.....if you jump off the roof of a chicken barn in Arkansas, the only direction you go is down....all the way to the ground....and that could cover you in cow crap. So with that reality, I also discovered that I wasn't invulnerable...if you cut me with a knife I bleed.
As an adult I know first hand that I am flawed. Invulnerability is not a word you could use to describe me at all. I have so many grey areas in my thinking and lifestyle it is difficult to see any color. I am weak, frail, and proned to stumble when I try to walk the straight and narrow. Sometimes my world crumbles and I crumble with it. I know I can't do life on my own. I need something to give me hope, to keep pressing on, to get up when I fall, to rebuild my world when it falls apart.
Left to myself, I make bad decisions, I rebel against the rules, I go my own way and fall away from the path that brings life. What is it I need? Superman draws his strength from the yellow sun. If he is exposed to his only weakness, kryptonite; all he has to do is fly toward the sun and his strength returns. All I ever got from the sun was a sunburn, so I know that won't work for me.
I need something in my life that doesn't condemn me when I fail. Something that whispers encouragement to get up and keep going when I fall. Something that spares me from what I truly deserve and perhaps lavishes on me what I don't deserve. I know what that something is.....it's called grace. I need grace. All imperfect people need grace. It is the only way as I see it, to get by, to keep going. It is the thing that keeps me from throwing in the towel when I want to quit, when I want to scream,"I'm done!"
The purest grace, the only grace worth experiencing comes from just one source: God. He sent His son, only son, to do for us what we could not ever attempt to do for ourselves....forgive our sin and allow us entrance into the presence of God. It took a divine grace to accomplish that. For God to look on his rebellious creation and love them anyway and then go out of his way to restore relationship with them is grace, it is all of grace. Him giving us what we don't deserve and sparing us from what we do.
I'm no superman. I'm just a guy that tries to get through each day with some sense of purpose and accomplish what I believe I need to do. His grace in me allows for the possibility of doing that. If I stumble, His grace encourages me to keep going. If I succeed, it is because of His grace. It is all Him and none of me. I kind of like it like that....takes the pressure off a little bit.
I pray that this grace I have experienced will spill out of me and onto others around me. I am selfish so I have to be aware of others. But there are others around me who haven't experienced the grace of God I have. They need to know. They need to be shown. The best way for them to discover God's grace for them is to see it demonstrated in me.
How about you? Not feeling like superman? No worries. God has provided something for us normal humans to get by.....His grace. Experienced it? Demonstrated it? Given it away? The only ones who can spread it around are the ones who've got it. Start sharing.....
