Grace

 "God's grace has a drenching about it.

A wildness about it.

A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it.

Grace comes after you."

                                                                Max Lucado

Wow. Grace. I love grace! I love the idea of having such a beautiful reminder of God's love and mercies and what He did for the world when He died on the cross! 

I WANT MORE GRACE! 

Dump it on me, God. I'll take all You have, thank You very much! Yes, I sure do love grace. I love the fact that I don't need to be motivated by guilt or fear. I have grace!

And sure, let's show it to others. I have no problem with that...as long as they haven't seriously wronged me! So yes, people that I approve of can have grace shown to them. There's plenty to go around, but seriously, ONLY people that pass my invisible set of rules they should know better than to break. I really don't think that's too much to ask. 

Not gracious of me, you say? How is it my fault that they sinned against me? I sure didn't ask them to! 

Nobody's perfect? Maybe...but I come a lot closer than they do. Obviously!

That's not fair of me? Please don't judge. 

     I'm just going through a lot that you don't even know about. 

     I'm really emotional. 

     I've been struggling a lot lately.

     I haven't been getting enough sleep.

     Work has been so crazy, it's unbelievable.

     I'm so stressed about so many things!

Those are excuses? As if! You don't know me! You don't know my life!

I've sinned against you? When? I was probably just really tired...did I mention I haven't been getting enough sleep?

Ahhh. There it is. My sin is excusable because of my excellent reasoning behind it. Absolutely I still deserve grace! But...do I?

It's obvious that I don't. No one does! However, I'm proud, selfish, arrogant, obnoxious enough to think I do. 

HOW

WRONG

OF

ME.

It doesn't matter how many people have wronged me, how much it hurt, when they did it, or what they did. If I'm going to base how much grace they get on that, and if I'm going to keep track of all those details, then I need to start with myself. 

No, this is not excusing what people have done to hurt me. I've been hurt deeply and the people who did the hurting will never know my pain. And at the same time, it's not excusing what I've done to hurt people...because in the same way, I'll never know how deeply I've hurt others. I'll never be able to feel their pain caused by me at its most intense, unfortunately. 

Thankfully, though, this isn't where the story ends. 

Enter forgiveness and grace. The dynamic duo. A necessity for us to have and the best weapon to fight against bitterness and hatred. Because when you allow bitterness and hatred to creep in and whisper in your ear, you'll just be miserable. Trust me, I know! Once the seed is planted, it's very difficult to uproot. 

I'll never understand grace. In all honesty, it doesn't even make sense to me. But I know I can't live without it...and I sure wouldn't want to.

Have a heart of forgiveness. You'll need to use it often.

Love, even when you only see hate.

Show grace. It's been shown to you, more than you'll ever know. More than you can comprehend. 

"To accept grace is to accept the vow to give it."

                                     Max Lucado