grace in the giving.

The topic was grace.

I was talking with a friend tonight and as she spoke, I realized that grace is everything. I mean, grace is everything.

And grace, see--it's not reciprocal.

I'm not showing grace to someone when I pay her to paint my nails. It's not grace when I return the book he lent me. I'm not showing you grace when I thank you for sitting with me at the hospital.

I am showing you grace when you hurt me, and I hold you. And grace is everything.

Deep in conversation, I realized that the only thing that could possibly save the situation she described is grace. Unconditional love, without reason, without hope for a better tomorrow, without the assurance that the gamble of grace will pay off.

Only, we have the assurance. We get the grace and the promise, both. Really, the grace is the promise, no?

In that moment, thinking about grace and its totalizing power, it occurred to me that if in fact grace is the only answer, and grace is not reciprocal by its nature, then nothing makes more sense than the atonement.

Grace is what cures us, but if grace, if wildly unrestrained and undeserved love, is the antidote, what is the ill? Something too dark for the ordinary. That's for certain.

I get tripped up over the atonement because it's complicated, it's intellectually confusing, and frankly kind of crazy. I don't always understand my relationship with both God and Christ, and how they are one and also distinct. I get lost. But then, nights like tonight happen. When I see the barest, most simple cross, and, in the opportunity to live it out simultaneously, I understand that grace is powerful in the giving. Christ is made alive, He makes sense, He's here, when I live out the grace He gave me. Which is kind of beautiful. If God's truth worked only on my mind, and not also on my heart, and in my hands, His creation might be wasteful, maybe silly. And without the opportunity for all of me to know His great love, to discover it in the passing, what would I know of faith?

So I pray for the grace to give to others. And to myself.