Grace

I haven’t written for over a year.  I periodically start writing, get distracted by other things and quit.  I’ve decided, though to make this a regular practice.  My dream job would be to be a public speaker, and what better place to develop ideas than in a blog.

The thing that has most been on my mind lately is the concept of grace.  I am unabashedly a Jesus follower.  I hesitate to use the moniker “Christian” because that is associated so often with close-minded, judgmental, self-righteous-type people.  It is my hope that I am none of those on a regular basis.  All of us fall into those categories at times be we Christians, Buddhists, atheists or whatever, unfortunately, but I do my best to follow Jesus example and love others regardless of any outward appearance.  That brings me back to the topic of grace.

I see grace defined most often as favor being shown to one that one does not deserve.  God is the perfect example of grace.  He loves me despite my behavior.  There is nothing I can do to change his love for me.  It doesn’t matter what I do or do not do — he is crazy about me all the time.  He doesn’t like all of my behaviors, not so much because they offend him, but because they ultimately hurt me or others.  When I behave in ways that are contrary to his nature of love, he gently leads me back.

If I truly believe that God loves me regardless of what I do or do not do, then I am free to love others in the same way.  Jesus said that if we hate someone, it is the same as murder, and if we are jealous and want what our neighbor has, it is the same as adultery.  All of us have done both at some point or other which makes us all, as Christian psychologist, Dan Allender puts it, murderers and whores.  Isn’t that awesome news?  I love it.  It puts us all on equal footing.  There is no person any better or worse than I am.  Knowing that allows me to freely love everyone because I am freely loved.  Isn’t that beautiful?

I have much more to say about this but I will save it for other posts.

~ by dobermama on October 6, 2011.

One Response to “Grace”

  1. The core of your writing while appearing reasonable at first, did not really sit properly with me personally after some time. Someplace within the sentences you were able to make me a believer unfortunately just for a while. I still have a problem with your jumps in logic and one would do nicely to fill in all those gaps. When you can accomplish that, I would certainly end up being impressed.

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