the grace place

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grace. It’s a word I’ve always thrown about, without really ever pausing to consider its weight. But the other day, I was hit in the face with the question of what it would really look like if my life was under grace’s authority - if I submitted to grace rather than my feelings or predispositions or desires. Romans 6:14 says we are not under the law but under grace - a beautiful, chain-breaking freedom, but one that I’ve heard so many times I’ve desensitized myself from it. If we really think about it, the authorities we operate under affect how we act, what we do, what we don’t. Under the authority of traffic laws, I don’t drive on the wrong side of the road, I don’t run red lights. This authority shapes the way I act, it informs my conduct. 

In the same way, what happens when I let grace rule & reign? I think it means grace is what informs my decisions. It is what conducts my interactions. It is what drives my pursuits. Grace is crazy and often one-sided, and doesn’t make a lot of sense. It seems to counteract what we have been taught about justice and vengeance and holding grudges. It counteracts this mentality of needing to be right or even powerful. It seems to make us feel we are the weak one to give grace where it is undeserved, when in fact grace requires great bravery and strength, and that is the whole, beautiful, wild point.

Grace challenges the black and white I’ve been taught in life. The criminal isn’t “bad” but someone who made a poor decision or two. The person who wronged me is just as broken as I am. Someone on the other side of the political aisle isn’t the enemy, they just believe issues should be solved a different way. Grace helps us to understand that there is a history, a hurting, a healing - happening in all of us. Grace asks of us what society does not, a laying down of self, a chosen humility, a quickness to admitting fault, to admitting brokenness.

When I operate out of a place of wild grace, ceasing is the need to prove. Grace itself says there’s nothing I can do to earn it - which means I get to stop trying to. I get to exist at peace with the fact that I will never be able to earn the radical grace I am shown. I get to operate instead, from a place of freedom. When you have nothing to prove, nothing to earn, you stop loving others out of necessity, and begin to out of overflow. It becomes innate, this wanting to share the grace you yourself have been shown. This is the grace place - overflowing, evergreen, abundant and always fruitful. Perhaps the best place to call home.