The Grace Game
Ever have a "Turning Point?" You know, life is going along as usual. Perhaps there is a slight feeling of discontentment, but life is normal. You are who you've always been. And then, something happens that leaves you forever changed.
I have had a few of those moments in my lifetime. There are the big life moments: my wedding day and the birth of my first child. There are the hard times: the day my husband and his dad made the desicion to close down their business and the day I found out my dear granny had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. Then there are the times I was casually going about life as usual, and nothing really extraordinary happened but somehow God managed to gently teach me a big life lesson that forever changed me.
Today, I want to reflect on one of those business-as-usual Big Moments.
I was 21. Idealistic as ever. I had just returned from 3 months of living in inner-city Los Angeles. I interned at a missions organization and got spend a lot of time at the Dream Center (a 24-hour church that literally has a ministry for every possible way a person could be down and out). I dealt hope to the homeless, helped with youth group missions trips in Tijuana, met some amazing missionaries, reached out to teen runaways, and put on programs for children in some of the worst projects in the LA area. It was an amazing summer.
I came home from my internship ready to save the world. And don't you know, in three months time I managed to gain all the experience and wisdom necessary to be able to do this better than anyone else? HA! I took a position at my church as the administrative assistant. I am pretty sure I drove my pastors crazy, for, with all my 3 months of ministry knowledge, I could not only administrate; I could also pastor better than they could. Confession: I was and still can be a complete know-it-all. My senior pastor later confessed that he almost fired me. I don't blame him. I was difficult.
At this time there happened to be a young man who was interning at the church. I couldn't stand him. I didn't think he belonged there. I also thought I was qualified enough to be able to say whether he belonged there or not... after all I did have my 3 months of internship experience. He would constantly make trips to my desk and stare at my chest. I didn't care if he was in recovery. This was the holy house of God! How dare he call himself an intern and look at a woman's bosoms, foul sinner! (I am being intentionally dramatic.)
Anyways, on this particular day, I had had enough from this young man. I left work thoroughly frustrated. I got in my car and headed to school. The freeway greeted my bad day with some especially congested traffic. Is it just me or does it seem that somehow everyone gets the memo when you've had a bad day and decides to drive especially bad?
A woman was tail-gating me. I found this to be mildly irritating. Then, she decides to floor it into the carpool lane and cut right in front of me, forcing me to brake hard and the car behind me to almost hit me. My bad day combined with this bad driver made me want to scream out every four letter word I could think of.
When I first got my license, to keep road rage from turning my mouth into a cesspool of expletives, I made up a game I called, "The Grace Game." Every time another driver did something to upset me, I came up with a ridiculous story of why that person would have had a good reason to do that. For example, "Perhaps he took my right-of-way because he was in a great hurry. He has missed every single one of his son's baseball games this season and he really needs to make it to the last one to prevent further damaging his relationship with his family. He accidentally hit a dog on the way to the game and decided to do the right thing and pull over to see if the dog could be helped. He knocked on a couple doors to try to find the owner making him irrevocably late..." Less than a minute of my absurd story and my anger was gone.
So on this particularly frustrating day, I remembered "The Grace Game." I began making up a story for this woman. "Perhaps her mom is on her deathbed. While on the way the the hospital, her boyfriend called to tell her that her dog had died. Then he called her back to tell her that he was leaving her for another woman. She now desperately needs her mom and wants so badly to see her one last time..." I begin to chuckle at my slightly morbid ridiculousness. I begin thinking how super clever I am for inventing "The Grace Game."
Enter my life changing moment:
God gently spoke to me in the midst of my prideful revelry, and said, "Amanda, that's conditional Grace. My Grace is Unconditional."
Silence while the words sink in.
Tears, lots of them, immediately ensued.
You may think I am crazy for thinking that God talked to me. But He did. My life-changing moment may be small and normal. But I can still hear those words. They were soft and gentle. A whisper really. But they jarred that girl out of the pride she had been living in and into a small glimpse of the vastness of God's Love.
Our grace is conditional.
We want excuses. Reasons for things. Bad behavior can be fine so long as there is an explanation for it.
God's grace is unconditional.
He doesn't need an excuse, a rough childhood to understand the adult you are today... you can be downright awful and the moment you ask for God's forgiveness, favor, help, love... you have it. It doesn't make sense. It cannot be fathomed or grasped. And it's really not supposed to be: see, there's this thing called Faith. Faith fills the gap between God Ways and our understanding.
I felt especially awful at that moment sitting in practically idle, rush-hour traffic. I had no excuses for my lack of forgiveness. I had no reason to be the prideful, judgmental, know-it-all I had become. I could somehow reach out and love the down-and-out, drug-addict on the streets who chose his addiction over his family, house, and job because I could see the rough life and the addiction as an excuse to live in depravity. But somehow, I couldn't extend love and grace to my pastors and that intern because they should know better. Right?
I should know better.
Most of the time, I do know better.
I am so thankful for the unconditional grace God gives this girl. If you read my last post, Eat My Words, you know pride is an ongoing struggle for me. The moment I think I have conquered it and have learned some great lesson in humility is the moment I find some other aspect of pride ruling some other aspect of my life.
In light of my last post, I need to remember to not form opinions of or make excuses for others. I am not God, and my version of grace and love doesn't even come close to measuring up to His. What is this great need inside me to play God? To decide who deserves what they get and who doesn't?
Unconditional.
Hmmm... What would it look like to live without conditions? I want to find out... And in the meantime, I am just appreciative of the fact that God loves me without them.
I have had a few of those moments in my lifetime. There are the big life moments: my wedding day and the birth of my first child. There are the hard times: the day my husband and his dad made the desicion to close down their business and the day I found out my dear granny had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. Then there are the times I was casually going about life as usual, and nothing really extraordinary happened but somehow God managed to gently teach me a big life lesson that forever changed me.
Today, I want to reflect on one of those business-as-usual Big Moments.
I was 21. Idealistic as ever. I had just returned from 3 months of living in inner-city Los Angeles. I interned at a missions organization and got spend a lot of time at the Dream Center (a 24-hour church that literally has a ministry for every possible way a person could be down and out). I dealt hope to the homeless, helped with youth group missions trips in Tijuana, met some amazing missionaries, reached out to teen runaways, and put on programs for children in some of the worst projects in the LA area. It was an amazing summer.
I came home from my internship ready to save the world. And don't you know, in three months time I managed to gain all the experience and wisdom necessary to be able to do this better than anyone else? HA! I took a position at my church as the administrative assistant. I am pretty sure I drove my pastors crazy, for, with all my 3 months of ministry knowledge, I could not only administrate; I could also pastor better than they could. Confession: I was and still can be a complete know-it-all. My senior pastor later confessed that he almost fired me. I don't blame him. I was difficult.
At this time there happened to be a young man who was interning at the church. I couldn't stand him. I didn't think he belonged there. I also thought I was qualified enough to be able to say whether he belonged there or not... after all I did have my 3 months of internship experience. He would constantly make trips to my desk and stare at my chest. I didn't care if he was in recovery. This was the holy house of God! How dare he call himself an intern and look at a woman's bosoms, foul sinner! (I am being intentionally dramatic.)
Anyways, on this particular day, I had had enough from this young man. I left work thoroughly frustrated. I got in my car and headed to school. The freeway greeted my bad day with some especially congested traffic. Is it just me or does it seem that somehow everyone gets the memo when you've had a bad day and decides to drive especially bad?
A woman was tail-gating me. I found this to be mildly irritating. Then, she decides to floor it into the carpool lane and cut right in front of me, forcing me to brake hard and the car behind me to almost hit me. My bad day combined with this bad driver made me want to scream out every four letter word I could think of.
When I first got my license, to keep road rage from turning my mouth into a cesspool of expletives, I made up a game I called, "The Grace Game." Every time another driver did something to upset me, I came up with a ridiculous story of why that person would have had a good reason to do that. For example, "Perhaps he took my right-of-way because he was in a great hurry. He has missed every single one of his son's baseball games this season and he really needs to make it to the last one to prevent further damaging his relationship with his family. He accidentally hit a dog on the way to the game and decided to do the right thing and pull over to see if the dog could be helped. He knocked on a couple doors to try to find the owner making him irrevocably late..." Less than a minute of my absurd story and my anger was gone.
So on this particularly frustrating day, I remembered "The Grace Game." I began making up a story for this woman. "Perhaps her mom is on her deathbed. While on the way the the hospital, her boyfriend called to tell her that her dog had died. Then he called her back to tell her that he was leaving her for another woman. She now desperately needs her mom and wants so badly to see her one last time..." I begin to chuckle at my slightly morbid ridiculousness. I begin thinking how super clever I am for inventing "The Grace Game."
Enter my life changing moment:
God gently spoke to me in the midst of my prideful revelry, and said, "Amanda, that's conditional Grace. My Grace is Unconditional."
Silence while the words sink in.
Tears, lots of them, immediately ensued.
You may think I am crazy for thinking that God talked to me. But He did. My life-changing moment may be small and normal. But I can still hear those words. They were soft and gentle. A whisper really. But they jarred that girl out of the pride she had been living in and into a small glimpse of the vastness of God's Love.
Our grace is conditional.
We want excuses. Reasons for things. Bad behavior can be fine so long as there is an explanation for it.
God's grace is unconditional.
He doesn't need an excuse, a rough childhood to understand the adult you are today... you can be downright awful and the moment you ask for God's forgiveness, favor, help, love... you have it. It doesn't make sense. It cannot be fathomed or grasped. And it's really not supposed to be: see, there's this thing called Faith. Faith fills the gap between God Ways and our understanding.
I felt especially awful at that moment sitting in practically idle, rush-hour traffic. I had no excuses for my lack of forgiveness. I had no reason to be the prideful, judgmental, know-it-all I had become. I could somehow reach out and love the down-and-out, drug-addict on the streets who chose his addiction over his family, house, and job because I could see the rough life and the addiction as an excuse to live in depravity. But somehow, I couldn't extend love and grace to my pastors and that intern because they should know better. Right?
I should know better.
Most of the time, I do know better.
I am so thankful for the unconditional grace God gives this girl. If you read my last post, Eat My Words, you know pride is an ongoing struggle for me. The moment I think I have conquered it and have learned some great lesson in humility is the moment I find some other aspect of pride ruling some other aspect of my life.
In light of my last post, I need to remember to not form opinions of or make excuses for others. I am not God, and my version of grace and love doesn't even come close to measuring up to His. What is this great need inside me to play God? To decide who deserves what they get and who doesn't?
Unconditional.
Hmmm... What would it look like to live without conditions? I want to find out... And in the meantime, I am just appreciative of the fact that God loves me without them.