Grace

Seven Occasional Meditations for Lent #4 Grace

There’s a little known piece from the “All that you can’t leave Behind” album simply called “Grace”. I listened to it first driving through Slovenia in Diederick’s car some months back. Maybe it was the incredible scenery we were passing through, or the good chat along the journey, but it started me thinking about the nature of grace – what it is and what it does for us. And a lot of the time, if we do think about it at all, it seems to belong in the world of religion, to high vaulted cathedrals and soft spoken bishops. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the here and now, the messy lives we live, and how I am I going to manage to get through the day

The U2 song brings the idea of Grace down to street level. It imagines her as a girl and follows her through the streets. Something along the lines of how the book of Proverbs treats the idea of “wisdom” and personifies it as a woman - Sophia.

Grace

She takes the blame

She covers the shame

Removes the stain

It could be her name

Grace

It's a name for a girl

It's also a thought that

Changed the world

And when she walks on the street

You can hear the strings

Grace finds goodness

In everything

Because grace makes beauty

Out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty

In everything

Well, that might not suit everyone’s theological cup of tea, but you get the picture. And there’s a form of grace that does indeed walk the streets. Grace that you encounter in the lives and responses of people around you. A kindness, warmth, a readiness to overlook the wrong that’s been done. A willingness to believe the best. A Grace that looks for goodness and beauty in everything.

But the Grace you encounter in the person of Jesus is something totally other. Deeper and higher than anything you’ve encountered before in the way if human kindness, it leaps from the pages of the Bible.

It’s a Grace that loves unconditionally and without expecting anything in return.
…………It’s a Grace that overlooks but does not ignore the wrong that’s been done.
………………….It’s a Grace that says, I’ll pay the price, let him go free.
…………………………………..It’s a Grace that doesn’t stop until it meets death
………………………………………....and then passes through it to the other side.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,

that bids our sorrows cease;

'tis music in the sinner's ears,

'tis life, and health, and peace.

He speaks, and listening to his voice,

new life the dead receive;

the mournful, broken hearts rejoice,

the humble poor believe.