Lessons from the Journey II

Grace. That's all. Grace.


Sometimes Grace is a theological concept. The basic idea being that our Creator gives us what we do not and cannot deserve. 


In its ultimate expression, Christians believe that we do not and cannot earn or deserve a relationship with God, but because of God's grace, we can have a relationship with God through faith in Christ. That is the essence, the big idea, of Christian faith. Two key passages underscoring this idea are:
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor 5:19) and 
"By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast."


Sometimes Grace is a theological concept. But if that is all it is, we are missing out on the good life.
Grace is intended to be a way of life, a way of living. A way of interacting with other people. We are intended to be people of grace, behaving graciously towards others - giving them what they do not and cannot deserve. 


But here's the deal: we can't give what we do not have. And if all we have is grace-as-theological-concept, all we can give is lip service: cheap talk about something we read about somewhere.


Grace is intended to be "lived out" of us, into other people. But before that can happen, grace has to be "lived into us" by someone else. Now the ultimate "someone else" is the God who gave up His heavenly stature and became man, in the person of Jesus.

But we need other people who can "live grace into us" by example. And that is important; and it is more important if there have been people who lived "un-grace", the opposite of grace, into us. 


Wounds have the capacity to bleed the grace out of us. And even if grace has been lived into us by parents, siblings, friends and others, those wounds, left untended, can drain the grace right out of us.


Ten years ago I was, in the words of Jackson Browne, "running on empty". I needed a serious transfusion of grace. And I received it in many ways and from many sources, but predominantly from a small group of people with whom I worked day in and day out for about 8 1/2 years. I was spoon-fed grace.


Now remember that definition. Grace is about receiving the undeserved. So to be spoon-fed grace, you have to come face-to-face with your own un-deservedness. To be specific, you have to blow it. And I did. Many times, and sometimes in huge ways. And life had taught me that "blowing it big-time" leads to "crash-and-burn".


Only it didn't lead to that. It led to Grace being lived into me, which had the effect of re-training my mind, my limbic system, my lower nervous system, into believing that grace really is more than a theological concept. It is a way of living. Maybe a way that I had never learned beyond the theological concept; or maybe a way that I had forgotten or had been bled out of me. But I learned it by having grace lived into me.

Back into the present: people have looked at me in the past 18 months and have said "We are noticing this about you". They are seeing grace in me. And I am thankful - but I know it's not about me. It's about what I have learned, by the way others have lived their understanding of grace into me. What has gone around is coming around again.