I talk about grace a lot because I need grace a lot. And I need to learn to extend it better to others.
Am I alone in my gracelessness? Maybe you have this grace thing down and whenever somebody acts like a horse’s patootie to you, you smile and turn the other cheek with sincere, godly compassion and generosity of spirit oozing from your pores. Swell.
I just want to blowtorch my offender’s eyebrows off with scorching retorts.
I’m not proud of my (un)Christlikeness in this area. Growth and maturity seem to move at a snail’s pace, don’t they? Especially when we’re dealing with ungracious people.
Consider that word, gracious. Our commonly accepted definition is “exhibiting kindness and courtesy.” Exhibiting? Well, any ol’ body can do that. I can fake courtesy as well as the next Southern Steel Magnolia. We’re trained in good manners from pups. We may not feel gracious, but we pretend because it’s polite. (Otherwise, our mamas will snatch us cockeyed.)
But is this sickly sweet deceit Papa God’s intention for us to grow in grace? Is there motivation to be gracious that goes deeper than simply behaving respectably? Yep, there is.
If we add ‘godly’ and ‘compassionate’ and ‘generosity of spirit’ to the portrait of true graciousness like Webster does, these spiritual attributes bring us to the root of graciousness, which is, of course, grace. “God’s grace has set us free,” (Romans 6:15 NLT).
Grace, as in our heavenly Father’s grace toward us that while we were yet sinners, He sent Christ, the only perfect, sinless person who ever lived, to die in our place (Romans 5:8).
Grace, as in His amazing grace that sets us free from the fear of condemnation because we, too, like our offenders, often mess up (Romans 6:15).
I believe that once we understand and embrace the magnitude of His divine grace, our nature becomes more reflective of the attributes of Yahweh within us. Because of His grace toward us, we can extend grace to others. Real grace, not a cheap, faux grace for the sake of good manners.
So, blowtorching eyebrows isn’t really a good idea (although, I daydream about it sometimes). Papa God has a better plan: grace.
