Gilead and Guilt

One of the things I love about Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is the artful way in which Robinson writes. In reading it I am constantly amazed at how skillfully she is able to paint pictures in my mind. What makes it even better though is the the fact that through her beautiful use of the English language she examines deep and meaningful truths. One example, from page 81:

I got up the courage to ask my father once if my grandfather had done something wrong and he said, “The Good Lord will judge what he did,” which left me believing there had been some kind of crime for sure. There is one photograph of my grandfather around the house somewhere, taken in his old age, that might help you understand why I thought this way. It is a good likeness. It shows a wild-haired, one-eyed, scrawny old fellow with a crooked beard, like a paintbrush left to dry with the lacquer on it, staring down the camera as if it had accused him of something terrible very suddenly, and he is still thinking how to reply and keeping the question at bay with the sheer ferocity of that stare. Of course there is guilt enough in the best life to account for a look like that.

True enough. But even so, especially so, what a wonderful blessing that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” (Romans 8:1).