Grace = the unearned gift of love

 Thank God for his grace and mercy that covers me and gives me new opportunities every day.  I understand mercy, but grace is more radical to me.  Grace is giving someone something based on nothing else but your desire to give it. This is the part of life that I grapple with every day because I don't deserve grace, and there is no way that I could earn it.  I can understand asking God to withhold something bad from happening to me when I am truly sorry, but receiving good when I don't deserve it is pretty mind blowing for me.  The Lord showed me a couple of days ago that the reason why I don't have certain things that I want is because I haven't been open to receive them.  In the Bible it says that God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, so what has been stopping me from receiving? Doubt. I have felt for years now like my bad decisions put me in a place to not be able to receive blessings. I feel like I have fallen from grace and now must climb my way back up the mountain into the blessed place in my life. The preface of that whole thought, however, points to the concept of earned love. Grace is given for love's sake and not for love received but love that is desired to be given.  Without love I think there is no grace.  Love is the catalyst for grace. 

We live in a world where most of us are defined by what we achieve and earn rather then by how we care, but grace is on the other end of the spectrum from achievement. Getting to grace from the current world view is a lifelong journey of faith.  For those of us who desire to explore the road of grace we find Jesus who is the exact vision of grace.  Jesus ate with people who "didn't deserve it", and he helped people who others of his culture called "dogs".  Jesus forgave people whom others were ready to condemn, and he embraced those who others tried to deny access.  Most shockingly, the son of God died on the cross for people who called him names and spit on him.  He died for people who were so filthy with sin that God couldn't even look upon them.  He died in the place where all of us should have been.  We should have been on the cross where Jesus died, and we should have been shamed for the whole world to see.  We should have been beaten until the flesh fell from our bodies.  It was because of God's love that Jesus took all of this punishment, and he graciously stood between us and damnation.  He did it for love's sake and not because we deserved it. We couldn't earn  love if we tried. So I guess my issue is the common issue of humanity.  I can't fathom God's love for me.  God's love for me crosses all of my boundaries of... everything. I suppose I should stop trying to analyze it and just receive it.  It's funny that my pastor has been talking about this.  It's another gift of God to send me confirmation for what he has been telling me all along.  "Just let me love and take care of you."           

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