As I was searching my computer for a note I wrote a while ago, I found some other random notes I saved in the beginning of this year. I opened a few. One of them contained a multitude of Bible verses and only one sentence that wasn't. It read:
THE BEAUTY OF GRACE IS THAT IT MAKES LIFE UNFAIR.
I searched it in Google to see if those were my own words or a quote. Lets just say my jaw would have dropped if those were my own words. Come to find out it was a band's lyrics. Lyrics with such beauty and truth that it blew me away. It hit me because if I have learned anything recently, it is a thing or two about grace.
I think that the world and my life are both constantly under an attempt to be "fair." We like fairness. We like to get what we deserve, in the positive sense. We like happily ever afters. We like to be loved as we love. We like to get the grade we think we deserve, the friendships we think we deserve, the life we think we deserve. As much as people seek to be selfless and not to be conceited, it is funny how much we think we are actually deserving of. We feel we are deserving of a good education, a car, a nice house, satisfying meals, among a never ending list of other things, with the only reasoning being that we earned it or we are just 'good people.'
Point blank: grace sucks. Grace sucks because it screws every single human beings perception up that likes and seeks fairness (so, basically everyone). One thing that grace is definitely not, is fair.
Let's just say within the past couple months I have learned grace to a whole new sense and a whole new capacity. Life has thrown some curve balls, some curve balls of things I never felt I deserved. The beauty of grace though... is that it makes life unfair. Grace would not exist without a willingness to put flesh and human instinct aside. A willingness to accept wrong when you did no wrong. A willingness to put people before yourself that probably, according to popular opinion, don't deserve to be put first. Grace has, and never will, make sense.
Grace sucks because grace is what put Jesus on the cross. If it weren't for the grace of Jesus, He could have used his powers (being God) to change the torment and suffering He endured. However, He took it upon Himself because grace means doing the unthinkable for someone else. He took our sins unfairly, and in that, the cross holds a multitude of beauty.
Even the slightest essence and notion of grace yields beauty endlessly. After all, who doesn't love those stories in the news of people doing something so sacrificially with no reasoning to do so? With people putting people before themselves when it doesn't make sense?
I used to never be able to grasp grace, and I probably never fully will. I remember when I used to read the Bible and it would mention grace and mercy, I couldn't distinguish the two. I couldn't wrap my brain around grace and why it was so valuable. Grace was a pretty word and truth be told I just really liked it as a girl's name. But beyond that, I was stuck. I guess to be honest, I never understood grace until I tried to live it. And now I see grace in the cross to an extreme I never saw before. I see a God who did what didn't make sense because He loved us more then He loved His own life.
Taking up your cross and following Jesus means taking up amble grace, even when you fully acknowledge how much it can (and probably will) wreck you. Grace hurts. Grace sucks. But if anyone knows how to give out grace when it's hard, it's Jesus. And in following Him, the beauty is that He can bless you with the ability to truly desire to give out His grace even when it doesn't make sense. God knows grace and after all, I think the heart of the Gospel is in many ways grace: the 'doing what doesn't make sense' and 'loving when it doesn't make sense' because it points to a world other then this one.
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Jesus knows grace best: Hebrews 4:16, John 1:14, 15-17, 1 Peter 5:10, Romans 3:20-24, Romans 5:1-2, Romans 5:12-21, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:4-9
Grace refuses to put a ceiling or a floor on concern for the neighbor. -Joseph Fletcher
Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace. -Jerry Bridges
Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.
-A. W. Tozer
