Rabbits, Pens and Grace

You’ve heard the phrase, “multiplying like rabbits,” which attests to the prolific way in which rabbits reproduce their own kind.  I have noticed the same thing with ball point pens.  There is no shortage around my house.  While there never seems to be one at hand when I need to make a note, I need look no further than the desk in the den, the kitchen counter, or table, to find half-a-dozen pens of various species.  There are promotional pens from businesses, churches, and schools.  There are pens of different girths, lengths and colors.  There are cheap pens that don’t write so well, and fancy wooden pens, skillfully turned on someone’s lathe.  We have enough, indeed, seventy times seven more than enough, pens to last us our lifetime of use.

And so it is with grace.  Grace is a concept that is often difficult to grasp.  People say grace at meal times.  Dancers show astonishing grace as they twirl and dip.  Some women are named Grace.  British royalty are often addressed as "Your grace."  But grace, as a religious term, means more than that.  Grace means love given without strings attached – love without conditions.  This is the way God loves.

At least that’s what the apostle Paul says in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “love does not insist on its own way.”  At least that’s the way Jesus seemed to love everyone he encountered.  Even as he hung on the cross he is reported to have said, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.”  To the very end of his life Jesus loved the world unconditionally. 

Grace is a word that Christians use to describe that kind of unconditional love.  That means there is enough, and even more than enough, love in the heart of God to love everyone, even those we find difficult to love, who seem mean, unloveable, even wicked.  Like the pens that multiply in my house, there seems no end to the love of God.  And like the diversity of pens that proliferate under my very nose, God meets each one of us as we are, where we are, with exactly the grace we need. 

There is a pen of grace which has your name on it.  But you have to pick it up in order to write your story.  I can’t wait to see how your life in grace turns out.