What
is “grace?” (A Year with Jesus: Daily Readings and Meditations
by Eugene Peterson, page 225).
Grace
is a very positive word—it comes with practically no negative
connotations. Whether someone wins graciously or loses graciously,
it’s a quality to be desired. I am going to avoid the temptation
to look the word up in the dictionary and come up with a definitive
answer to the question: What is “grace?” Instead, I’m going to
look back to where I first encountered grace and strive there to find
its essence. This was for me in the home.
Grace
involved the way I was treated by my family despite behavior that
could have elicited the opposite of grace—namely cynicism,
meanness, spitefulness, and ridicule. The first time I was shocked
by a father yelling at his son (words that my father would never yell
at me) was when I was about 13 years old in Ellenton. I was playing
in an expansive lawn area late one afternoon next to a street lined
with houses. From one of these houses I heard a father yelling at
this son as the son came out the front door. The father yelled after
him: “If you were half as smart as you think you are you would be
President of the United States.” I knew instantly that in this
spirit and with this tone my father would never address me. I got
from my father just the opposite—quietly informal conversation
filled with generosity, forgiveness, and belief in me; all serving to
bring encouragement and hope. This is not because I had faults that
my father could not plainly see; it was rather because my father
loved me enough to treat me with generosity and forgiveness—with
grace.
Perhaps
one would expect grace more from my mother (after all, women are
named “Grace”). I remember mother’s smile, her focus on the
task at hand, and her joy. This light overflowed upon my brother and
me.
Now
my brother (4 years older than me) and I were sometimes antagonistic;
but when the chips were down, my brother graciously covered for me
and my sins. One time I got mad at him and threw a screwdriver at
him, hitting his leg and bringing blood. He graciously let the
matter rest and never mentioned it to “the powers that be.”
Another time when I was beginning to experience sexual emissions, I
somehow got into my head to dribble Wildroot Cream Oil hair tonic
into the toilet. I thought it (being white) looked something like
semen. After a spell of this, at the breakfast table mom and dad
mentioned seeing it in the toilet and said Wildwood was expensive and
this was a waste. Whether they flat-out asked who was doing this or
just told us to stop I do not remember. But my brother said he would
do it no more; again, graciously covering for me.
Based
on my first encounters with grace, I continue to cherish it wherever
I find it and pray that, despite deep inner forces to the contrary, I
can sometimes genuinely express it.
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