Dear St. John's Community,
A word that has been bubbling up for me lately is the word "grace."
Even on a good day in normal times, most of us are what I would call grace-deficient—lacking grace, both for ourselves and for others.
I think that the isolation we're enduring right now is making this situation way worse. We're tending to be hard on ourselves, and hard on others.
So what is grace?
Philip Yancey wrote a whole book on the topic, and he calls it the "last best word." It is a beautiful word that has not been sullied. It simply means that which is not deserved, like a grace note, a grace period, a gratuity, or even simply the experience of gratitude!
The love that God has for us is grace, because we don't deserve it. When we take that to heart, everything shifts in our relationship with God—and likewise everything also shifts in our relationships with others, and with ourselves. God has forgiven and loved us, and then asked us to do likewise.
As Yancey said in a recent
talk with Dean Randy Hollerith of the National Cathedral, we have to get beyond the idea that to get God to like you, you have to be good. God loves us anyway, and that's the true nature of God's grace.
So where does that lead us?
Even now, grace abounds. Since we don't have the benefit of gathering in person with other people (which I believe is such a great way to transmit and receive grace in community) we have to consciously look for grace all around us. If we look for it, we will find it.
There are so many demands on us these days that it can be very easy to feel that we aren't living up to whatever expectations have been set. Whenever those thoughts start to creep up and invade, just remember to return to the reality of grace.
To understand the way of Jesus, it starts here. To be people of the way of Jesus begins with accepting that grace is the highest reality of our lives.
Blessings,
Rob+
Listen to the whole talk in the Cathedral's "Honest to God" series
here
:
