Grace

"God's grace has a drenching about it.  A wildness about it.  A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it.  Grace comes after you."  -Max Lucado

Just what is grace?  I sat down in a bookstore on Saturday night and picked up the book Grace by Max Lucado and realized that I always think I know what it is, and I learn about it time and time again, and yet somehow the definition always seems to escape me, and just when I need it most I realize I need to relearn yet again what grace is.  What it does.  Why it's so important.

The Greek word for grace charis literally means "free gift"; Strong defines it as "the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life."  The Bible goes even further and says in Ephesians 2:8-9 that "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast."

Another creative way of looking at GRACE:

God's
Riches
At
Christ's
Expense.

Grace is separate from salvation and faith in that when we have faith in Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, we receive salvation because of God's grace.  Grace is not works, and cannot be achieved by works.  What are works?  Anything someone does to try to be a "good person" or to try to be righteous.  When we try to work for grace, we end up "frustrating" grace, as Paul says in Galatians 2:21.  True salvation through faith places the Holy Spirit in us, and it is His grace that changes us from the inside out.  He doesn't need our help.

However, don't think that we can continue living our same lives, that we can say "yes" to Jesus but not let His grace affect us.  That, too, is "frustrating" grace.  Our desire to know God, our pursuit of a relationship with God, our profound recognition of who God is and what He has done for humanity...when all of this is internalized, when the extent of His love for us begins to sink into our very core, it doesn't leave us unchanged unless we then choose to run the exact opposite direction.  "Never mind, God, I don't want your free gift."

Max Lucado in his book Grace uses water imagery to say that "God's grace has a drenching about it.  A wildness about it.  A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it.  Grace comes after you."  Todd Agnew in his song "Grace Like Rain" sings, "Hallelujah, grace like rain/Falls down on me/Hallelujah, all my stains/Are washed away, they'rewashed away."  John Mark McMillan's lyrics in "How He Loves" say that God "loves like a hurricane, I am a tree/Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy...Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes/If grace is an ocean we're all sinking."

Have you ever been hit in the face with an ocean wave before, been drawn under by it?  I have.  And then trying to get air, I was thrown back under the surface of the water by yet another wave, and so came up coughing and sputtering and trying to clear my lungs of the warm, salty sea water so that I could actually get a mouthful of air.

I think when we are truly wrecked by grace, when it truly hits us, it's kind of like that.  We are smacked with it, drawn under by it, overwhelmed by it, and it just comes back for us again and again in different ways at different moments.  And it's one of the most powerful and beautiful things I've ever experienced.  And when I find myself most unworthy of it, even more than usual, that's when it hits me the hardest, and I let it draw me under and take over me and work in my heart, let it wash over my soul.

Further study: Romans 5, story of "How He Loves", examination of grace like a check

Musings on Christmas

Sometimes the Christmas story just sounds too much like that: a story.  It's got a setting, principal and secondary characters, a plot, a climax, a resolution that leaves room for a sequel.  Sometimes I fall into the routine around this time of year and even get swept along by the whole glorified aspect of the baby Jesus born to a virgin to save the world thing.  It sounds like it could be a movie, too, and guaranteed there are hundreds of movies out there about this very theme.  Approaching it cynically, it's enough to make one wonder about the validity and even the meaning of Christmas.  But what I need to remember is the fact that no matter how often human beings take this story and make it even more of a story, appealing to the general audience, it's more than just a story.

It happened.

Perhaps not on December 25, but still it happened.  Perhaps not with Mary riding into Bethlehem on a mule and pausing at different homes, taking her time to ask every single person if they could spare a room for the night, but it still happened.  Perhaps not with exactly three wise men or los tres reyes magos like we always see and have grown used to seeing, but still it happened.  Perhaps not with everyone lined up neatly around the manger in picture perfect lighting, baby Jesus sleeping silently in a pile of clean hay and tidy swaddling cloths, but still it happened.

In fact, we tend to glorify this event so much.  We forget that Mary was just a teenager, and probably freaked out of her mind for multiple reasons: a) she witnessed an angel come to her and tell her she would be pregnant (how many people see angels, again?), b) she was pregnant at a young age, c) she was pregnant by means that had nothing to do with normal conception, and d) she wasn't even married to Joseph at this point.  We forget that Joseph probably assumed that Mary had been unfaithful to him at first, and that he was probably furious with her for a little while before an angel also came to him and told him what was going on.  We also forget that Mary was very pregnant when she had to travel with Joseph to Bethlehem for the census, that they probably didn't have a mule available to them and they had to walk the entire way across treacherous terrain and probably without proper footwear (sandals, anyone?).  We forget that Mary could have begun to contract at any point during her arrival in Bethlehem and simply would not have had the time to amble around with Joseph looking for a neat little inn, and that odds are she just ducked into the nearest stable because nobody was willing to take in a stranger.  We forget that there were no painkillers.

We forget that this, in fact, definitely did not occur on December 25, since the fact that all the sheep were out in their pastures at night lends to the thought that it was probably springtime and mating season for them.  We forget that hundreds, if not thousands, of shepherds and magi who traversed miles to be able to see the Savior of the world in baby form.  We forget that King Herod tried to use this whole sequence of events to murder the child so that he would not overthrow Herod's reign (even though this was never Jesus's intention, since His kingdom "is not of this world" [John 18:38]) and in fact ordered all children under the age of two to be executed in order to try to avoid this possibility.

We forget that Jesus, though He was born entirely God, was also born entirely human, and human babies cry.  A lot.  We forget that a manger is a feeding trough, usually for pigs, and not the most sanitary location for a newborn baby.  We forget that Mary may or may not have anticipated Jesus's birth on this journey and therefore may or may not have thought to have brought clean cloths to wrap him in; in fact, from such a long journey, they were probably as dirty and sweat-ridden as she and Joseph, and the cloths may have been taken from their own backs.  We forget that Mary and Joseph probably hadn't eaten much of anything and had hardly slept any up to this point.

We forget why Jesus was even born to begin with.  We forget that God created humans and loved them as His favorite part of all creation, and yet we with our free will decided that we wanted to go our own way apart from God, and not live in relationship with Him, not listen to Him, not have anything to do with Him.  We forget that a rift created by such "sin" (anything that "misses the mark" of God's absolute perfection and relationship with Him, like a bullseye in a target) can only be filled and bridged by a deep, personal sacrifice of some sort, and that for centuries humans tried to make up for it with their own perfect animal blood sacrifices.  We forget that love came down to Earth, that God so loved the world that He gave the world Himself as His son that we might forever live with Him and be in perfect relationship again with Him through an absolutely perfect, eternal sacrifice to trump all others (John 3:16).  We forget that, ultimately, this is why Jesus was born: to die one of the worst deaths, if not the worst death, that humanity has ever recorded.

We forget that all of this is more than a story: It's history.  And we forget that grace is not just a gift given for the whole of humanity, but that it's also personal.  It's for me.  And it's for you.  He loves me.  And He loves you.  He loves you.  You.  Just as you are.  You, with all your imperfections.  You, with all your problems.  You, with all your unfulfilled goals and dreams and wishes.  You, not because of anything you've ever done or ever will do.  You, simply because you are.  Simply because He chooses to love you, because He thinks you're wonderful and marvelous and lovely and an incredible nuance of creation.

Let's consider this aspect reality of Christmas a little more, shall we?

Pegado a Dios

(Note: some of this will be written in Spanish because of the connections.  I will translate it in parentheses, even though it sounds better in Spanish.)

While it's perhaps not the greatest analogy and perhaps not the best situation, I was hit with the realization yesterday of how much bachata dancing (or any similar dance) relates to a relationship with God.  Not in the sense that it's sensual, or anything like that.  Allow me to explain:

When dancing bachata, the closer you are, the better, generally speaking.  It's a lot easier to follow the person who is leading you the closer you are, because you can relax into the movement of your partner's body and feel where he wants to go and what he wants to do next.  In fact, when the two partners dance pegados (that is, stuck together), that is when it is the easiest to detect what moves the other partner wants to do, and that is when it is the easiest to follow, and also when it's the most enjoyable because of the fact that it's simply just requires the willingness to follow.

There's a song that Jesús Adrián Romero does called "Pegado a Ti" (stuck to You) that completely relates to this theme.  Basically, the closer we get to God, the better we are able to detect where He wants us to God and what He wants us to do.  We can hear Him speak more clearly; His voice is more audible to us over the noise of the world around us.  In fact, when we are pegado a Dios (stuck to God) as though we were dancing bachata, that is when it is the easiest to know where He wants to lead us and when it's the most enjoyable, because all we have to do is just follow Him.  It can be kind of scary simply giving over to His lead and following, and sometimes we don't know the steps very well that He wants us to take and follow because they are new to us.  But the more we dance with Him, the better equipped we are to keep following and keep dancing.  The bottom line is that it requires a constant decision to trust God.  It's not a one-time "yes, I'll follow You this time for this step," because if it were that way, the dance would stop in the middle.  It's a constant decision to keep dancing and following Him and His steps.

I could keep going on and making connections but I think you get the point, dear Reader.

It's been hard for me very recently to keep trusting God and following Him.  It's been difficult to remain pegado because some recent happenings have just had me so strongly desiring to not dance so closely, out of pain, out of fear, out of anger/bitterness.  But the truth is that this is when I need to cling even tighter to Him, because quite honestly I don't know the steps on my own for this dance, and even if I did, in any dance it's not good for the follower to resist the lead.  It messes up the whole dance and results in a dance that doesn't come close to what it could have been.

Proverbs 3:5-6 = "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."