A drop of grace.

 

 

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

I overheard a conversation the other day.

As the words rolled off her tongue, my spirit cringed within me.

"There's this guy at work, and he is really hard to talk to.  I try to witness to him, but he knows how to get under my skin. He's a hard one to love. The devil sure is working overtime in him."

Her line was drawn.

Good vs evil.

My heart sank.


Sadness filled my every fiber.

The words pierced and stung, as they fell upon my ears.

I recognized them.

I had heard them before, they were familiar.

All too familiar.

And if I weren't of sound mind, I would swear it was my voice coming from her mouth.

I've said those words before...

more or less.

Maybe in a different setting, with different word combinations...

but the same.


Too much the same.

How many people, family, friends...

have I pushed away with those words?

With that attitude,

with my ownership...of righteousness.

Grace.

God has been teaching me a hard, but eye opening lesson on Grace.

What I thought I knew, was only a glimpse.

A tiny slither.


"A hard one to love..."


Aren't we all?


"there is no one righteous, not even one." Romans 3:10


not. even. one.



 Isn't that why we need Him?  the One?


Grace hung from a cross,

bleeding, suffering, flesh hanging, breath gasping, water flowing, dying...

for me, for you.

...Oh, how I can hardly fathom that.

He didn't die, for me to use His gift to bring pain upon someone else.

To sling His love around like a pair of num-chucks...beating my brothers and sisters til they lay bleeding and lifeless.


Standing over them, my foot on their back, holding my hurtful words high in the air like some trophy.

He did not bleed until the breath left His body for me to

...love less like Jesus and accuse more in the name of justice.

He died...

so that we all would receive grace.

It's something our small minds have a hard time wrapping around.

Much less what grace truly represents.

Grace is messy.
It's unimaginable.
It's scandalous.
It's immeasurable

But...it's  there.

And it covers every inch of our sin wretched lives.

As I crawl on my knees in the dirt, trying to grasp the hem of His garment, stretching out to feel Him, needing my deliverance, thirsting for one tiny drop of Him,  grace fills my soul,

dripping.


covering my sin.

My body trembles with each warm drop, I shudder in disbelief,  that He would love me so.


My heart aches and rejoices as I receive His gift.


Drop by drop the flood of grace flows in.

freely.  undeserving.  all for the taking.

As His crimson love drips gently and slowly from that cross, it covers the lines I have drawn.


Grace drips and heals and severs all hatred.



It pours over me...drowning my soul.


Soaking into every part of me.


 I breathe it in and out. 


It overflows...this grace given.


And yet,


 I cease to offer a drop of grace to someone else...

Lord, let my mouth speak love and my heart pour out grace. 
Let me never hoard Your grace from others.

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1 John 4:20 KJV)

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)