Grace dances. Romans 5.6-8

I know nothing, except what everyone knows —if there when Grace dances, I should dance.   W. H. Auden

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Aye, that is grace dancing.  God reaching down for imperfect man, costly though it was to him.  God’s very language is the language of grace, and he is in the business of extending to us his favor, even though we do not deserve it. God isn’t concerned with fairness in the way we are; actually, grace is strange because there’s absolutely nothing fair about it.

And then I remember, "I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work." God decrees. "For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.” Isaiah 55:8-9 (MSG)

What’s your experience with grace?

  Have you known and accepted God’s grace?

     Has the infinite grace of God changed you?

       Do you flow in grace – giving and receiving it freely?

          Hmmm . . . can’t really know love without grace

              For love ‘believes all things’, bears all things,

                  and gives the benefit of the doubt . . .

                      That is grace.

The drippings of grace … longing for a scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. — C. S. Lewis

Ah, it seems that I fairly easily extend grace to others, especially when it comes to their sin or their pasts—you know, their struggles.  Yet I hold a harsh line with myself.  I remember as a child singing the old hymn I love, “Grace Greater than all our Sin,” –‘seems good for everyone else, but for me, the bar is higher.  Wait---what is greater than ‘all my sin’?  My expectations of myself?  Makes me think of the song by Building 429-

“When no one else knows how I feel
, your love for me is proven real.  
When no one else cares where I’ve been
, you run to me with outstretched hands, 
and you hold me in your arms
 again . . .

I need no explanation of ‘why me’
, I just need confirmation
 ‘only you’ could understand the
 emptiness inside my head . . . 
I am falling down upon my knees
 to find the one who gives me peace . . .” Ah, and I’m connected with grace again.  I’m reminded that his ways are not my ways.  “. . .I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”  Exodus 33:19 (NIV)

God doesn’t wait for me to come to him . . . he runs to me, with arms outstretched.  And in his arms, I remember how to dance again.  Now that is amazing grace.

Christine

podcast:

APPLICATION  for WoP:  What is GRACE to you?  What difference does it make in your life?