I remember exactly where we were when Sister Roberts said it. We were standing just inside the entrance to the dining room, in front of the community bulletin board. Her comment would perhaps not have sounded extraordinary to you, but it did to me. She said, “I have learned to be grateful even for my sins, because I have seen the good that God has brought out of them.”
Sister Roberts is dead now, but I have never forgotten her words or how amazed and envious I was, not having attained that depth of trust or gratitude myself. I wonder now, during this Easter season, why it is that we can proclaim with full voice how God has brought good out of the evil of the crucifixion, but find it harder to believe in the power of God to transform evil into good in our own lives. If, through the love of Christ, God can take the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, and the cruelty of the Roman executioners and work through them to bring new life for the world, then surely by this same love of Christ working today, God can take our own betrayals and denials and acts of cruelty and turn these into good as well.
The question arises: does the fact of God’s power and grace mean that it doesn’t matter what we do? Paul asks this same question:
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? (Romans 6:1-2)
When we truly know the love of God, we want what the Beloved desires. When we love others in Christ, we don’t want to do anything to hurt them. Nevertheless we do sin. Paul knew this, too, from his own experience.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:19)
But God’s love and mercy are always stronger than our sin. This is just as true today as it was on the first Easter Sunday. So I pray:
Loving God,
grant me the grace to see
the good that you are bringing
out of the events of my life —
and even out of my sins.
Give me a trusting and grateful heart
that I may praise you at all times
and rejoice in the power of your love.
Through Jesus
the Crucified and Risen,
Amen.