Grace, Grace, and More Grace

   

Wishful thinking at my house...

   Consistency with daily tasks is not one of my better traits. I will leave the unfolded laundry on the kitchen table until the surface is all but obscured before I will get around to dealing with it; I hate hanging up clothes I have just taken off so I end up piling them up in a chair where they eventually collect dust and the ever-present dog-hair; and I avoid the grocery store like the plague. Yet I have somehow managed to function as a daughter, woman, wife, mother, grandmother, college counselor, friend, sister, and domestic goddess (insert a smile here, this is supposed to be funny) for one reason and only one: the grace of God. You might think, as I once did, that the grace of God is reserved for the hard things one encounters in life or as a covering for the sin that so easily besets us; but I have come to believe something very different: the grace of God is at once for everything and for all of life: the mundane as well as the sacramental; the boring as well as the glorious, and the burdensome along with the transcendent.  I don't know about you, but I have just as great a need for the everyday circumstances of my life to be bathed in grace as I do the struggles that seem destined to impact my soul.
   A while back I encountered this tiny little verse that probably comes close to rivaling the ubiquitous "Jesus wept" as one of the all time shortest verses in the Bible, but despite its brevity, it has had a profound and lasting effect upon me and the way that I view my life. It is also found in one of the books of the New Testament that I have continually struggled for many years to understand and apprehend, the Book of James. I offer these words up to you today as a gift. A gift that I want to share. I also want to challenge you to meditate upon these six little words, this logos from the heart of God to you and to me to see if they will not change your perspective on living as much as they have altered mine. Without further ado, here they are:

     "But He gives us more grace..."James 4:6a

   Think about it. Never less. ALWAYS MORE. ALWAYS MORE. I cried the first time I comprehended these words. I had seen the words before, even read them before, but for some reason they were never able to penetrate through my grey matter to traverse the distance to my heart and they certainly seemingly never traveled that mysterious and incalculable distance to my soul. Yet somehow, in a manner I don't fully understand, this logos finally made that God-inspired, God-breathed journey to the place where bone meets marrow and heart meets soul. I got it.
    And for that I am so very thankful this Lord's day...that despite all that I am, He is all that He is and so it is that He gives us more grace. 

Grace. Undeserved, beautiful, and bounteous.