Gospel News — Jun-Aug 2012

former Soviet people among them, consider themselves basically good, the fault is always with the others. That God could come into your life and forgive you and save you, as He saved me, it seems, when I was swimming as a teenager; this was very hard to take on board. It is still difficult, I think, for many people in the former Soviet Union, probably it is hard for all people wherever they are on earth.

It is hard to forgive people without their repentance, or saying sorry. To let go of others' sins as God has let go of ours, is very difficult. To forgive is to let go finally, to overcome resentment. If this were to be done, there would be no tension between Russian and Latvian people, there would be no continual reference to the past. But for the secular, agnostic people in Latvian society, there is perhaps no motivation to do this because there is no experience of having had their sins forgiven by God. Even if they consider themselves `religious', attending Lutheran or Orthodox church, there is little awareness of having personally offended God, and therefore no real experience of forgiveness. And so forgiveness of others is hard for them, and understanding grace is hard for them.

All the time we are preaching grace. I have listened to very many talks by Duncan, many more than I can remember, and there is usually a reference to grace. But I am not sure that people understand it. It seems to me people understand grace only by personal experience. It is one thing to read of it, or hear it preached. But we have to see it in order to really understand it, and to be motivated to live like that ourselves.

As to my personal experience of grace, I believe all people are born with a vague feeling that there is a force above us/ whether you are born into a religious or an atheist family. And during your lifetime God knocks at your doo,

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at the door of your heart, and if you are hard of hearing He is gracious enough to knock and knock again. I have been an avid reader and both Russian and Latvian literature abound in references to God, quotations from the Bible. That was what made me wish to read the Bible, but as Bibles were not easily available in Soviet time, that wish just lingered. And it was only after my baptism and those references to grace in Duncan's talks that I realized that my wondrous teenage experience was actually God knocking, trying to get through to me: I was bathing in the sea, I stood up and raised my eyes to the pines on the shore, the sky, the sand... the colours brightened umpteen times....and I stood gaping at the scene in wonder. After a time all returned to normal. And the first person I spoke to of it was Duncan. Only after so many years did I realize it for what it was.

Our ecclesia in Riga has grown very much because of grace. Which leads me to question, whether grace can be misused, or even abused. For example, when we started providing food at the meetings for the street people and those living in night shelters, more people attended. It was grace to provide food for those people. The obvious question was, `But many of those types of people are in that position from their own fault, their own bad decisions'. Our constant fear was, `But aren't they just going to use us?' I suppose that is a risk, and so I would like to suggest that living with grace involves a risk. On the more personal level, we can forgive someone but they can misuse that, and end up abusing us. But does that mean we don't show grace? In my own life I see how God was showing me grace from my teenage experience and onwards, in fact, I suppose, right from birth. And maybe beyond that even, before the creation of the world we were known by God, by His grace. I could have not responded to