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County Line |
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County Line |
A SNAPSHOT OF GRACE
INTRODUCTION
We live in a graceless world. Our American song says, "God shed His grace on
thee." Yet Benjamin Franklin sets the tone for how we Americans live and move
and have our graceless being. It was Franklin who developed a graceless
system of living that has been a template ever since of our graceless
attitude.
Franklin listed 13 virtues that he believed worth striving for. Virtues like
"Silence," "Frugality," "Industry," and
"Tranquility" all added up to make one
a complete, self-made ideal person. But Franklin wasn't content to simply
make a list. Franklin kept a book. A page for each virtue. On each page
for
each virtue was a column labeled "Defects." In that column would go his
failures that day to achieve the virtue.
Franklin chose a different virtue to work on each week, noting every mistake,
and starting over every 13 weeks, striving for a clean 13-week cycle. This
wasn't a passing fancy for Franklin; he recorded all this over many decades.
His was a graceless world.
But we live in a graceless world. Do you want a free trip on an airline-
we've got frequent flier miles-you can get your "free" trip, but by golly, you
earn it.
Four weeks ago, I mailed in by certified mail the payment to our mortgage
company. The signed receipt has yet to get back here. Somehow, that
certified mail is now lost. FT Mortgage Company is not a company that
operates by grace, it's graceless. If you don't believe it, read my mail.
We have a saying in this country that goes like this, "You get what you pay
for." A graceless motto if ever there was one.
February is a miserable month for us male couch athletes. Football season is
now a memory, there's no baseball, the only thing there is is what every male
detests-figure skating invades the airwaves. Yet, looming on the horizon,
just next month is the big event, March Madness, the Final Four! More often
than not, it always comes down to two evenly matched teams and the game itself
comes down to one second left on the clock and an 18-yr. kid at the free throw
line. The game is on the line. The other team calls time out, their purpose
to rattle the player at the line, make him even more nervous. He comes back
to the line, takes his place, dribbles a few times, as 20,000 people are
screaming their exhausted lungs out, as hundreds are waving balloons and odds
and ends in his face as he eyes the basket. He has one shot, maybe two, and
these shots are for all the marbles. If he makes them, he's the toast of the
state, reporters will write about him, the school will honor him, and he could
even run for governor and win.
But miss it and he's a bum. Miss it and he'll be remembered all his life by
his friends and his school as the one who didn't come through. A few seconds
to do or not to do it. A few seconds that will mark him for the rest of his
life. We live in a graceless world.
But do we? In Isaiah 55, we learn of the real world, a world that exists,
but has to be revealed to us. It's a world of grace. Prior to Is. 55, chapter
53 has told us of the One to come that's Grace-full, "full of grace and full
of truth." Isaiah 54 announces to Israel the efficacy of the Grace-full One's
sufferings. Isaiah 55 announces it to the whole world.
Verses 1-2 make the call to us-"Come and buy" something, buy without
money!"
What the Grace-full One offers, He offers to us free! Gratis! No strings
attached, on the house, free of charge!
We see in contrast to this graceless world, something uniquely attractive-
grace. So foreign to our lives lived according to the make or break March
Madness world that we have to define grace so we can all understand. We have
to define it and go back again and again to rewash our minds from the earn it
or you don't get it world in which we live.
So, let's do that. Let's define grace: Grace means there is nothing I can do
to make God love me more. Grace means that there is nothing I can do to make
God love me less. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an
infinite God can possibly love.
Do we doubt that? Look at the pictures Amnesty International publishes of
men and women who have been cattle-prodded and jabbed and spit-on and
electrocuted. "What kind of human being would do that to another," we ask.
Look at the book of Acts and see such a person, shake hands with someone you'd
refuse to shake hands with-Saul who cattle-prodded and electrocuted, maimed
and tortured other human beings. See God. See God love just such a person.
See God go after just such a person. If God could love him, couldn't He just
possibly love me?
We need to go back again and again to our definition because by instinct I
feel I have to do something. I have to make the shot.
Then in Is. 55:8, we learn that the wisest man who ever lived, the best man
who ever lived couldn't have invented grace as God's way of coming into a
relationship with us. Solomon couldn't have invented it, not Job either. No,
because, "My ways are not your ways, My thoughts aren't your thoughts." (We've
all heard those verses, but rarely are they put in context, the context of
God's discussion of His grace.
Paul says that no person could have thought up grace-Gal. 1:11.
To help us see it, Isaiah gives us a parable from nature-vs. 10-11:
The rain and snow fall on a thirsty earth. So God's Word falls on our dry and
thirsty lives. When rain falls, it falls on stone hard Colorado mountains and
the mountains repel it. But it also falls on grassy meadows in beautiful
valleys that receive it. So the Word falls on us all, and where grace is
received, there is the joy of a harvest. It's all grace, from God, by God and
through God.
Which would you say is more attractive, God's grace or Benjamin Franklin's
columns?
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