In the last few days I’ve been impressed by the depressing action of those who are low on forgiveness and high on condemnation. People’s lives and loves can be broken by not being able to forgive, which results in separation and all that entails. There is no grace!
So, divorce can cause bankruptcy, family relationships can be ruptured, a simple disagreement rises to block the sun.
Many years ago I sat in a lecture series by a leading academic. We spent the better part of hours looking at, dissecting and reassembling the word “grace”. At the time I thought a dictionary definition, those one or two sentences, would have been sufficient.
I’m coming to wonder! Wonder that people can be less than graceful. Wonder that those definitions just scratch the itch. Wonder that the complexity of human life can miss such a simple explosive truth.
As I watch the lives around me, grace is taking on the picture of a rope tossed to drowning people. Those thrashing in the waters of bitterness are so busy trying to strengthen their swimming skills so they don’t drown, they fail to see that they could just grab the rope and be lifted out of the water. But, of course, grabbing the rope means leaving behind all the great survival exercises they have learned, and instead learning one exercise, that of merely grabbing, trusting and hanging on for dear life!
What pictures of grace do you see?
Amen.