Held By Grace

>> The Reach

The human heart was made for connection—with God, with one another, with meaning that outlives the dust.

And yet everywhere you go, from the narrow alleys of Karachi to the busy malls of Kuwait City, you can feel the same invisible tension pulling at people’s souls.

Everyone is reaching—reaching for peace, reaching for assurance, reaching for a sense that their lives count for something beyond the paycheck or the prayer mat.

Even among my Muslim friends in the Middle East, that yearning is not hidden. It rises quietly in a whispered du?a?, in the early-morning shuffle toward the mosque, in the tired smile of a shopkeeper closing his stall just before sunset. Humanity’s reach for God is sincere. It’s the best of us. But it’s also the story of our exhaustion.

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1. The Search for Acceptance

Every culture builds its own ladder to heaven.

For the devout Muslim, it is the daily rhythm of salah, the alms of zakat, the fast of Ramadan, the pilgrimage of Hajj—acts meant to prove devotion and earn mercy.

For the secular Westerner, the ladder looks different but climbs the same direction: performance, image, success, influence.

Each is a promise whispered by a trembling heart: If I can just be good enough, maybe I’ll be accepted.

But ladders, by nature, are unstable.

The higher you climb, the more you shake.

One misstep and you start again from the ground.

I remember sitting with a taxi driver in Lahore during the last nights of Ramadan. He was gentle-voiced, gray-bearded, and clearly weary from fasting.

We talked about life, about faith, about how tired we both were of ourselves.

When I asked how he would know if Allah had forgiven him, he smiled faintly and said, “Brother, Allahu a?lam. God knows best.”

And then he shrugged, not in defiance but in surrender.

That phrase—Allahu a?lam—was more than reverence; it was resignation. It meant he could never truly know.

How different that is from John’s certainty:

> “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13)

Grace begins where ladders end. It starts when the climb is over and the arms of God take hold.

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2. The Distance of Uncertainty

The beauty of Islam is its reverence. The tragedy of Islam is its distance.

God is exalted—yes. Merciful—yes. But also utterly unknowable.

The believer is always reaching toward a light that never quite reaches back.

When a Muslim says, Allahu a?lam, he means it with awe; yet those same words can quietly close the door on intimacy.

It’s a holy silence that keeps love at arm’s length.

I once stood outside a mosque in Turkey just after Maghrib prayer.

The call had faded, the streets were soft with twilight, and a man beside me said, “We pray because He commands, not because He speaks.”

That sentence stayed with me.

We pray because He commands, not because He speaks.

In Christianity, the command of God and the voice of God are the same person.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

The God who commands also communes. The one who is All-Knowing became knowable.

When Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee, He was not humanity reaching up—He was divinity reaching down.

He was God spelling His name in human skin, showing us that holiness and nearness are not opposites.

Every other faith tells people to climb. The gospel says, God came down the ladder Himself.

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3. The Heart of the Gospel

At the center of Christianity is not an ethic, not a ritual, not even a religion.

It is an event. A cross planted in the soil of history where divine justice and divine love met and refused to part.

Other faiths give instruction; the gospel gives intervention.

I remember explaining that once to a friend in Baghdad.

He was proud of his discipline, proud of his prayers, but he carried the same hidden fatigue that every honest soul knows.

When I said that salvation was a gift, not a wage, he looked offended for a moment.

Then he said quietly, “If it is free, why does anyone try?”

I told him, “Because love makes effort joyful.”

He thought for a long time, then nodded slowly.

That’s the paradox of grace.

It doesn’t abolish obedience; it transforms it.

It turns duty into delight.

We don’t obey to be loved; we obey because we are.

The cross doesn’t say do more; it declares it is finished.

Paul captured that when he wrote,

> “By grace you have been saved through faith—and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)