On March 3, 1887, twenty-year-old Anne Sullivan stepped off the late afternoon train in Tuscombia, Alabama. She was met by Kat Keller, who, with her husband, had called for Anne to be a tutor for her six-year-old daughter, Helen. Some four years earlier, Helen had lost both her sight and hearing, the result of a severe illness. The parents, unable to penetrate Helen's tomb-like wall of silence and darkness, were at their wit's end. The child's frustration was equally intense, and she frequently broke out in emotional tantrums. Bringing Anne Sullivan to tutor Helen was the parent's last tremulous hope.
The miracle that followed is one of the greatest stories of all time. Bit by patient bit, Anne Sullivan broke the shell that encapsulated the bright little Helen. She opened the door of her life to understanding, to friendships and to ministry. Helen Keller, in turn, blessed the world. Anne Sullivan remained Helen's constant companion for 50 years. Each year Helen Keller celebrated March 3, the anniversary of her meeting with Anne, as her "soul's birthday."
This story illustrated God's grace at work in the life of the Christian. Like Helen Keller, we are needy and dependent, but endowed with similar potential. God, with intensity of purpose and unyielding patience, is working to break our shells of selfishness and open our blind eyes. His grace—relevant, measured and tenacious—is directed to our specific needs.
God, who is pure, holy and loving, made us in His image. He gave to us the power to respond and relate to him in loving fellowship. This fellowship, however, has been broken by human sin. And, like a contagious disease, sin has contaminated the entire human race. The medicine—forgiveness, rebirth and sanctification through Christ—is adequate for all, but it must be received on person at a time.
God's saving grace, administered by the Holy Spirit, enlightens us, calls us, entices us, empowers us, cleanses us and helps us to become what God has always planned for us to be: His holy, loving and beloved children (Eph 1:4; 5:1-2).
The Bible tells us that God predestined us "to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brother" (Romans 8:29). The integrity, purity and love for God and humanity found in Jesus constitutes God's pattern for his redeemed children. In 1 John 3:2 we find these confirming words, "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
First, we must come to terms with God. The object is to know Him, as we know our mother or our best friend. We can no longer deny Him, reject Him, turn our backs on Him, nor disallow His claims upon our lives. We must respect who he is: our Creator, our Benefactor, our Judge, and also our Savior. He is God, living and personal, not just a concept or idea. We must turn our faces to Him, bow our head in respect before Him, and worship Him. We must trust and believe Him. These are all factors in conversion, but also in sanctification (i.e., growing in grace).
Progress in sainthood is measured by how much and how sincerely we love God. Christ's command is to love "the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" (Luke 10:27). Certainly this level of relationship is possible only by God's grace!
Second, we must reject sin. This means we reject what would normally be "our side," our self-defense, and stand rather on God's side. Repentance at our conversion, of course, demands this. So does continuing Christian life and growth. Our prayer becomes, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thought. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psa 139:23-24).
As followers of Christ who want to be "like Jesus," we long for a clean heart. We want, as Charles Wesley put it in a hymn we still sing, "a principle within of jealous, godly fear, a sensibility to sin, and pain to feel it near."
Someone has said that the heart of the mature Christian toward sin is comparable to the attitude of a meticulous housekeeper toward dirt. She has a sensitivity to it and a personal abhorrence and intolerance of it. If her little child brings some mud into the house, she is quickly aware of it and, if necessary, gets on her knees (observe the symbolism!), and wipes it up.
Third, we must "set our hearts" to obey God's commandments to "love one another deeply, from the heart" (1 Peter 1:22), and our neighbors as ourselves. Only with God's help is this possible!
The opposite of Christian (agape) love is not only hatred and prejudice, but also self-centeredness and selfishness. Here too Christ is our model: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
God calls us to be holy (1 Peter 1:15-16). While God always respect our wills to respond with either yes or no, he wants our unconditional yes. Mother Teresa, the saintly Catholic nun who gave her life for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, said, "True holiness consists of doing God's will with a smile." What is the significance of the smile" It indicates that our will is to do God's will. We are doing what we want to do.
Here—in the experience of sanctification—is a yes to God so profound that it affects all subsequent response. When this happens, God's grace flows freely into and through our lives.
