Defining Grace

Like most knuckleheads out there, I do a pretty good job of understanding things in my Paul Bunyan sized head, but getting that through to my heart is an entirely different matter. Take the idea of God's grace. For years I could read about it, talk about it and thoroughly understand it from a conceptual standpoint, after all, that's an area where knuckleheads excel. As for that whole heart thing...

Here is how Webster defines grace:

Unmerited device assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

Ok, my brain gets it. I don't deserve it and it makes me all new and squeaky clean. Like I said, understanding the concept is pretty easy right? Then why don't I get it? I mean really get it, where my heart is completely filled with it?

I've been with my kids at my brother's house tonight. My brother and sister-in-law are out to dinner, and I've had a great time watching their kids while they're out. Now that their little one is asleep and the other kids are winding down and watching a movie, I've got some time to myself.

One of the tasks I had to check off of my list while getting the youngest one off to bed was to make sure that she took her medicine. It's that thick, pink, liquid stuff that we all remember taking when we were kids. Seeing that bottle of medicine reminded me of a perfect analogy in a sermon I once heard, only the lightbulb didn't go off then because of course that item is suspended directly above my knuckle-shaped head. Instead my heart leapt, because it finally understood what my head had known for so long. I thought I'd share it here.

When a doctor writes a prescription to give a child an antibiotic, the usual course of events has us taking that slip of paper and handing it to a pharmacist, who then sets about doing their work. They'll measure out some pink powder, which is the real medicine, and drop it into an empty bottle. Then they'll measure and add some water, twist on the cap, and shake it until it becomes the iridescent goop that most of us have had to take at one time or another. Chemists call the contents of that bottle a suspension, because the medicine is floating, or suspended in the water. As a parent we take the bottle home, pour the right amount into a spoon or a small cup, and ask our child to "drink up". Once inside the body the water and medicine separate, and the medicine can do its work cleaning out whichever bug is making them sick. The water only serves to deliver the medicine that the child so desperately needs.

All of humanity suffers from the sickness of sin, and there is only one medicine that offers a cure. The forgiveness that God offers through the acknowledgement of our sin and acceptance that Jesus Christ died as a sacrifice for that sin, well, thats the medicine. Grace is the undeserved delivery system. Without grace, forgiveness couldn't to do its work washing us clean (sanctification) and making us new creations (regeneration). God suspends forgiveness within grace and together, the cure is our redemption.

The analogy of water as a delivery system is especially meaningful to me. Later this year I'm privileged to be able to join several members of my local church on a missions trip to Peru, where part of our mission will likely be drilling wells and building towers to supply small villages with clean drinking water. Here in America water is in such plentiful supply that we take it for granted. I wonder how the people I meet in Peru will react when the water begins to flow in their village for the first time? Am I as grateful for grace as I know they will be for another such basic necessity?

After all, we really can't live without either. Drink up!

Copyright 2008