The apostle Paul attempts to answer that question in his many letters, but even Paul admits we "see in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Many a theologian has since tried to define salvation and/or the mechanisms of grace. Complicated scholarly constructions and volumes of paper are created in the task. Thomas Aquinas finally admitted that his efforts amounted to little more than a "stack of straw" and he never wrote another word.
I rather think that the poets may have a better grasp of this, or at least a better grasp at expressing the meaning of salvation (regular readers just knew I'd end up at a poem, didn't you?). And so it is that our friend Karen in Tennessee sent a poem yesterday that took my breath away. Here it is:
Salvation
by Lynn Ungar
By what are you saved? And how?
Saved like a bit of string,
tucked away in a drawer?
Saved like a child rushed from
a burning building, already
singed and coughing smoke?
Or are you salvaged
like a car part -- the one good door
when the rest is wrecked?
Do you believe me when I say
you are neither salvaged nor saved,
but salved, anointed by gentle hands
where you are most tender?
Haven't you seen
the way snow curls down
like a fresh sheet, how it
covers everything,
makes everything
beautiful, without exception?
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