Serious Post For The Week: Difficult Grace

I just finished a book for one of my classes entitled, "Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity." It was a very dense book, so I'm sure I missed 85% of the points that were made, but this one left an impression on me:

"In telling of the regular visits [the poet Donald Hall] and [his wife, Jane] Kenyon received from their pastor, Hall offers a very different portrayal of God and a very different sense of the way God was with them during their suffering, as a presence that promised nothing by itself:

When their minister
Alice Ling, brought communion to the house
Or the hospital bed,
Or when they held hands as Alice prayed,
Grace was evident
But not the comfort of mercy or reprieve.
The embodied figure
On the cross still twisted under the sun.

This is mysterious and difficult grace, this grace that is clearly evident but that may not include 'the comfort of mercy or reprieve.'"

I'm chewing on this. I think it holds important implications for my time at City of Hope.