Grace Intervention

I used to understand that when we spoke of grace, it referred only to God and the unmerited, undeserved love and favour he pours on us. It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we have or haven’t done, we all receive unlimited grace from the heart of God. Everyone gets the sunshine, everyone gets the rain, it has no bearing on what our attitude is like; sunshine and rain are simply there for us . . . and so it is with God’s favour.

More recently, I have begun to wonder about grace in the sense of how we treat one another, or more appropriately, judge one another, and suddenly the topic becomes sticky or prickly . . . we don’t often do it well, do we? We don’t always give with grace, and we don’t often seek it, by that I mean that in our churches there seems to be this unconscious, ingrained sense of needing to be outwardly strong as a reflection of our faith in an all-powerful God, and so we must all appear as confident, trusting Christians with an unshakeable sense of joy! There is no real place for vulnerability . . . no real place for hurt . . . no real place for doubt . . . no real place for the shit of life. It is outside everyone’s comfort zone, and hidden behind an inward voice that tells us if we feel low or sad or depressed it’s a sign that faith is slipping and we don’t really trust God.

This, of course is rubbish . . . but how many of us, when asked, “How are you?” reply with a time honoured, “Oh, fine thanks” even though life might be hell on toast for the time being? When are we honest enough to actually say, “Well, life is falling apart for me just now”? We don’t want to appear vulnerable, or out of control, or ‘faithless;’ we don’t want to push other people out of their comfort zone and put them on the spot, confronted with our pain. But why are we so embarrassed or fearful about being authentic and vulnerable with our Christian brothers and sisters? Shouldn’t the church be a place of warmth and care and healing and support? That, however, is exactly the point, isn’t it . . . the church is not always a place of warmth and care and healing and support, because people are not always bringers of warmth and care and healing and support, because we carry this false understanding that we must not appear weak or vulnerable or in need, and thus faithless; and so the vicious circle continues spinning on and on! We don’t often give grace, because we rarely allow ourselves to seek or receive it.

Even so, if we follow the Christ who gave us the beatitudes to live by, who brings love and compassion into reality, then this is something we have to work on, deeply and urgently. We need to be a people of grace for one another, which means dropping the false smiles and admitting we are vulnerable and in need of a little help. It’s nothing to do with losing faith or trust in God, it’s about being human and facing human life in all its glory and all its shit. It’s about being real, and learning to be more real . . . it’s allowing ourselves to be filled up with grace so we can simply give it to one another.