A couple of days ago I stopped off at my mailbox to pick up
my mail after being gone for a few days. Although the majority was junk mail
that I tossed into the recycle bin nearby, a couple of envelopes I shoved under
my arm to open and look at later. Once I had flipped the lights on and laid my
things down I began flipping through the mail I had saved. One piece in
particular was a reminder of my student loans, those that can currently be
under forbearance due to the fact that I am still in graduate school. Typically
I open this piece of mail, glance at the page in front of me, and then it gets
tossed right into the garbage can. For some reason, at this moment, a short
little five-letter word caught my attention.
GRACE
The page stated,
Requested: Forbearance, Type: Grace.
My forbearance type was grace.
I had other things to do so the thought was fleeting.
However, several hours later that word “grace” popped back
into my head. Interested to see what the “definition” of grace would be, as
determined by dictionary.com, I looked it up. Grace means (according to
dictionary.com, not myself), “elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or
action.”
Ugh, my heart sank, not even a miniscule attempt at
interjecting Biblical truth into defining a word that can only truly be defined
through a Biblical interpretation.
I’ve thought about this quite a lot over the past few days,
thinking of how the world has misinterpreted and incorrectly defined the
meaning of grace. In fact, based on my limited Biblical knowledge I think the
worldly definition of grace is quite the opposite of the Biblical definition of
this word.
In short, I think of grace as God’s favor on people.
However, if you’ve ventured on this road of serving God and
loving people, you’ve probably experienced the opposite of what the world
defines as grace. Grace, although ultimately good, is not always extended in an
elegant fashion, with great form or manner. In fact, grace can be a nitty
gritty, dirt under your fingernails kind of thing.
I have though of several times in my own life when I felt
God’s grace the most. Let me just say, those times were not at grand
masquerades or balls. Instead, those extensions of grace were most felt when
life was just plain tough. Those moments when I caught myself asking, “why?”
(If God has a pet peeve, I imagine it to be the word why and probably entirely
because of me. J)
In those times when I wondered, how did I end up here in life?
Ultimately, if we’re thinking eternally here, I guess the
world’s definition of grace has some truth. When we reach Heaven’s gates,
that’s when we will see and experience that worldly definition of grace. There,
in Heaven, we will know elegance and great form.
Until then, I’m simply relying on God’s nitty
gritty grace, to keep me digging my way out of the trenches.
