English raconteur T. H. White recalls in the BOOK OF MERLYN a boyhood experience: “My father made me a wooden castle big enough to get into, and he fixed real pistol barrels beneath its battlements to fire a salute on my birthday, but made me sit in front the first night . . . to receive the salute, and I, believing I was to be shot, cried,” How many times have we, too, misinterpreted the ambiguity of life and though ourselves to be “shot” when delight was intended? One translation of Psalm 94:19 read, “In the middle of all my troubles, you roll me over with rollicking delight.” The psalmist is right; God’s festive gaiety is somehow to be discerned in the midst of our own troubled fears. God often plays rough before breaking into laughter, and only a bold and rowdy playfulness can draw the whole of what we are to such a God. Yet, we’re not always able to grasp that truth. Ever expecting to be shot, we are often dumbfounded by a grace we can’t conceive.

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