From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ. Colossians 3:11 (MSG)
Everyone is Included – The Wonder and Grace Series – Part 5
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
Grace is that glue of life. The suspension of it all. Somehow, we are here together. And despite everything, or rather including everything that is going on in and around us, grace makes it possible for me to open my eyes, and smile at the world. At you. At us being here together.
In her book Grounded, Diana Butler Bass said:
“We live and move and have our being in a great web of belonging whose connective tissue is grace.” (Pg 158).
The idea of grace exists in most religious and spiritual traditions around the world, and they're all linked with meaning. Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das says, “Grace is the “isness’ of life. It’s the recognition that everything is connected and sacred.”
For the ancient Hebrews, Grace was expressed through the word “Chesed (also Hesed),” meaning mercy, or loving-kindness. Grace is seen as a creative force — an act of exceptional kindness and goodness.
We can see how the Christian idea of grace evolved from this understanding. But defining grace as simply being receiving something we don’t deserve, limits its potential. It is indeed that connective, creative tissue of the Divine and the human. “If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.” (John Mark McMillan.)
“Grace cannot be understood by any ledger of merits and demerits. It cannot be held to any patterns of buying, losing, earning, achieving or manipulating, which is where, unfortunately, most of us live our lives. Grace is, quite literally, “for the taking.” It is God eternally giving away God— for nothing— except the giving itself. I believe grace is the life energy that makes flowers bloom, animals lovingly raise their young, babies smile and the planets remain in their orbits— for no good reason whatsoever— except love alone. Abundance, largesse, excess is the spiritual name of the game, “full measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over and pouring into your lap” (Luke 6:38). Grace will always be experienced as more than enough instead of a mere survival mode. If there is not grace to a situation, it does not really satisfy or give any deep joy.” – Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality.
This has huge implications for our daily living and worldview. Grace is more than you just getting what you don’t deserve; it takes it further than that. Grace is an understanding of abundance, forgiveness, and connectedness.
It should challenge our ideas around scarcity (there IS more than enough to go around), individuality and others (remember Jesus saying that what we do to the least of these, we do to him?), equality (“words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.” Col 3:11), just to name a few.
Grace is a retelling of our story, individually and collectively, through the love and way of Christ. But to get a glimpse of this grace, to feel its water engulf your being, you have to let go of your stubborn ego that insists it knows what's going on. You must humble yourself, surrender, open your eyes with the wonder of a child and learn to re-see through the eyes of grace.
Go to Part 6 – Measure for Measure »
Written by Lizzy Milani
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