Grace is an gift of trust. It’s a complicated thing because there’s always a danger it will be abused, but it’s essential to a healthy community because we have all failed, and all hurt people in the process, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. You can’t have a community without trust though; you can’t have any real, human relationship at all without trust and so you grant someone permission, unearned and without reason, an opportunity to try.
The biggest danger of grace is that someone might mistake it as earned or deserved. By definition you can’t deserve grace. You have no right to it. You can’t demand it. No one owes you grace. It can only be gift. You can honour it, you can make the most of it, make it mean something… but even then, you haven’t earned it.
It’s also important to understand, grace does not absolve you of consequences. Consequences aren’t something that go away. Words can’t be unspoken, actions can’t be undone. There no ballance sheet for life where your choices get tallied up, even if we desperately want to think that way. What you bring in to the world is what you bring into it. The good, and the bad. The trust you’ve earned is always better for you, not always light, but always manageable… But the grace, the trust you haven’t earned is something different. Something you should always treat with the respect it deserves. You should always be a little afraid of grace because it can be heavy in ways it’s hard to live up to.
Me personally, I don’t give grace lightly. I don’t pretend to know who you should or shouldn’t give it to. I do my best to use my judgement, but it’s by definition not something you can’t know is going to be worth it.
Grace is an gift of trust. It’s a complicated thing because there’s always a danger it will be abused, but it’s essential to a healthy community because we have all failed, and all hurt people in the process, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. You can’t have a community without trust though; you can’t have any real, human relationship at all without trust and so you grant someone permission, unearned and without reason, an opportunity to try.
The biggest danger of grace is that someone might mistake it as earned or deserved. By definition you can’t deserve grace. You have no right to it. You can’t demand it. No one owes you grace. It can only be gift. You can honour it, you can make the most of it, make it mean something… but even then, you haven’t earned it.
It’s also important to understand, grace does not absolve you of consequences. Consequences aren’t something that go away. Words can’t be unspoken, actions can’t be undone. There no ballance sheet for life where your choices get tallied up, even if we desperately want to think that way. What you bring in to the world is what you bring into it. The good, and the bad. The trust you’ve earned is always better for you, not always light, but always manageable… But the grace, the trust you haven’t earned is something different. Something you should always treat with the respect it deserves. You should always be a little afraid of grace because it can be heavy in ways it’s hard to live up to.
Me personally, I don’t give grace lightly. I don’t pretend to know who you should or shouldn’t give it to. I do my best to use my judgement, but it’s by definition not something you can’t know is going to be worth it.
I hope that’s what you were looking for.