Grace, do I really get it?
Grace, we hear that word so many times and are given so many different metaphors to understand it, but I’m not sure if I really do understand it. I mean, I can comprehend the words at face value that God shows me grace in that even while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me and provided a way for me to have righteousness with God. But, when I really try to plumb the depths of the concept, I think my brain shuts off at a certain point. I say this because I am very grateful that God would do this and thank him for it, but sometimes I think it falls short in terms of how I let it effect the way I live life.
When someone drives in a way I don’t like, speaks in a tone that bothers me, takes up more than one parking space, or leaves their shopping cart in the middle of a parking space I can be so easily angered. You see, I am so determined to have everyone and everything operate under my terms and it really bothers me when they don’t! That’s not grace though, is it….. You see, God designed us to be in a relationship with him and sin really messed it up. Things didn’t turn out the way he wanted them to, but he went to great lengths to make things right again even though he had no fault in the matter. And what really blows my mind is that I believe he knew the great lengths and pains he would have to go through (grace cost the life of Jesus) before creation for this relationship but he created it anyhow. I hope and pray that I can become more GRACEful and that I can be more like Christ in the way that I relate to others. Which brings still another question I can quite wrap my mind around…what would the world be like if I lived out grace in the way that Christ did?
- Aaron