Wishful Thinking

Christianity is mainly wishful thinking....Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes in on. Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.  (Buechner, Wishful Thinking)

Now you (and I) know where the title of the book came from. Christianity is mainly wishful thinking.

It's the last sentence of the quote that stopped me. "Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it."

This is a great definition of prevenient grace.  We have a yearning - a wanting - dare I say a wishing - for a creator beyond ourselves. We look. We pray. We search. We study. We are hoping to catch a glimpse of that which is beyond ourselves.

Why would we spend so much effort and hope on looking for - wishing for - something we can't see and can't prove, and can only believe is present through faith?

Why? Because that for which we look and wish is God. And God is nudging us, through prevenient grace, to look. It is in the looking - in the desire to search for God - that we can find evidence of God. Because without God, we would not look.

Grace. It is amazing.