On the opening page of Educated, a stranger-than-fiction memoir that includes a bizarre religious upbringing, the author writes:

“In [this story] are many types of people, some believers, some not; some kind, some not. The author disputes any correlation, positive or negative, between the two.”

Most of us can understand why she’d say this. We’ve met Christians who are living contradictions to everything Jesus said and did, and non-Christians who seem to possess genuine patience, kindness, and joy. It’s enough to give one pause.

Her quote has me thinking about how people change and where God’s empowering grace factors into the process.

I found help in a slow reading of this excerpt from Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart, especially the final section on ​“A Way of Grace and Rest.” It outlines how all people are spiritually formed and how Christians specifically are formed by the Spirit of God.

In regards to being a truly kind and patient person he says, ​“little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself—the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others. Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness will be shallow and short-lived at best.”

One line leaped off the page for me: ​“Until we advance in love itself.” It even sparked a little poem.

Until we advance in love itself
The kind facade and patient shell
With the right pressure
Will crack to reveal
Little advance in love itself.

When we do crack and our lack of love tempts us to hopelessness — or to once again try harder—Dallas invites us back to the heart of grace: the love of God.

“But taking love itself — God’s kind of love — into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first. And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselves and others.”

May it be so.