~Seth Barnes (founder of AIM)
How many of us get distracted or confused about what love is based on what we see in the world around us? The world tells us that love is conditional; commit and pursue what makes you happy and brings reward.
It teaches that love is disposable. What's the reasonable response when someone lets you down? Doesn't hold up to their end of the deal? Causes you hurt instead of bringing you joy? The world says: walk away. That's fair, after all, isn't it? Justice is when we get what we deserve. Someone hurts or disappoints you, they don't deserve your time or energy, do they? And love someone who has nothing to offer you, who can't pull their weight? Well, that's plain ridiculous...right?
The world teaches us that all of our relationships and interactions with one another are based on expectation.
Juxtaposed next to the ideas depicted in the media, Jesus's description of what it means to love is radically different. Love, in the biblical sense, Agape, is unconditional. It is NOT about responding to or matching what someone brings to the table... it is not based on expectation. What any of us brings into any relationship can change, and we are all bound to hurt or disappoint others at certain times in our lives. We are far from perfect, after all. But love is grace. If justice is when someone gets what they deserve (and mercy is when they don't get what they deserve), then grace is when someone gets what they do not deserve.
Christ calls us to support and love the the sick, poor, and needy - people who cannot give us anything in return. He urges us to reach out to the users and abusers. Moreover, Christ calls us to love the unlovely, those who hurt us, OUR ENEMIES, without condition. This IS the love God shows us. Yet, how many of us live in states of ungrace? Maybe we give money, or spend time serving the less privileged, but how many of us have walked away from people who have let us down? How many of us have failed to show grace, not to our enemies necessarily, but to those who have disappointed us? I know I am guilty of this.
And it has been weighing on me since coming across the blog by Seth Barnes that had the quotation at the top of this post. I had posted it on my Facebook page the other day and a friend responded with this comment: " think about it, our ungrace is not tattooed on our foreheads, but on our hearts. God is the only one who can see the true intentions of our heart. He chooses to overlook our ungraces, because of his grace." How wild and humbling is that? If God chooses to overlook our ungraces, because of His grace, surely we can do our best to make the same choice. And so I'm doing a careful inventory of my heart this week, weighing my own instances of "ungrace." I said at the start of this blog that I wanted my life to be a legacy of love. I'd like to add to that, I would like it to also be marked by grace. Proverbs 3:27 says, "Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act." Although we might not always feel like it, we all have the power to choose grace, and not ungrace, as our default response towards others.
Praying God uses you in powerful ways in Haiti!
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