Fall into Grace

Genesis 8:22

"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

Each late summer, I get a horrible itch, literally. When getting out of the shower or even after just working out and sweating, my upper body goes into an itching spasm. It is quite painful and frustrating. As much as I have been able to deduce, the cumulative summer heat and humidity, the combination of water/sweat, maybe the scouring chlorine from the shower, and perhaps my skin not getting enough hydration and/or body oil, makes me dread August and early September.

The past couple of years, I have been much more mindful about drinking copious amounts of water, taking shorter and colder showers, and this year, even ingesting a couple of tablespoons of olive oil daily. It has made the itching less worse than in years past. I used to suffer each day for at least thirty minutes, feeling as if insects were tearing at my skin. Like a hair shirt, mortifying the flesh.

Now I have staved it off to some degree but it is still happening.

Friday night, after moving some books to the back of my car trunk to be resold or recycled, I broke up in a sweat with the perfunctory itching and what is euphemistically called "swamp-ass." I was miserable. Taking a shower would only aggravate the itching, so I washed up with a cloth. I prayed that God would bring the Fall with its cooler temperatures and refreshing  breezes. Yesterday, it rained in torrents here in Pennsylvania and today looks like outside has made the transition to Fall. The dial has turned at least for today into the loveliest time of the year.

Grace is like the Fall. We can't work for it. We wait for it. We actually have to die to ourselves, much like a tree has to release its leaves and become naked before heaven. The itch of sin and the relentless working to get right with God, has been put to rest. We embrace the letting go and in doing so, God creates an array of beauty and color.