Afraid of Grace

Abba, I feel like I don’t know what it’s like to live in grace. I don’t know how to accept it. I don’t know how not to abuse it. I don’t know what it looks like on a daily basis.

I don’t know how to live without condemnation and judgement and laws and measurable stipulations and punishments and guilt. I couldn’t begin to describe what an “unconditional” love might be like. 

But my heart yearns for it. 

Whatever this phenomenon is–this room to simply be myself, an equipping to chase after a God that I don’t deserve, a freedom to look like You in how I act and react and love and teach and speak to others or how I give and pour out–it makes my heart tremble. 

I’ve lived the last 28 years getting a very long, drawn out, hand-on education of human justice. Of black-and-white, three-strikes-you’re-out, get-what-you-deserve, “never look back”, and giving up on lost causes. I know it quite well with all of its ins and outs. 

But Your gospel speaks of something that goes deeper than our version of justice–this thing called “grace”. You said it brings deeper conviction, richer intimacy, and mind-blowing transformation, and then came to us face-to-face to demonstrate it. 

I’d think after having access to this for so long that I would have unabashedly welcome it into my life. Or perhaps at least I might have an idea of how it works. But I realized something quite profound today: 

I’m afraid of your grace. 

I’m afraid that I’ll mess it up. I’m afraid that I won’t deserve it. I’m afraid that I’ll be overwhelmed by it. And I’m terrified that I’ll make You look stupid in the process. Seriously. That’s what stops me from receiving something so incredible: I’m not afraid that it doesn’t exist; I’m afraid that You’ll regret ever causing it to exist once it comes in contact with my life. 

But I’m pretty sure You knew that. And I’m pretty sure You had mentioned that it was bound to happen. And yet You still decided to lavish this madness on my–on our–shattered hearts, our throbbing wounds, and our disastrous lives. 

I’m so, so glad that that’s the case. 

I need Your grace today, Abba. I need to carry Your burdens instead of mine; what’s on my shoulders lately is beginning to overwhelm me.  But even there, and especially there, I need that same life-giving grace. 

I’m needing You.