Grace is not Cancelled

I think it’s fair to say that many of us aren’t handling all this (gestures vaguely) very well. With January 2021 wrapping up many of us are reeling. I’ll admit I tend to live with my arms full of everyone else’s feelings— and my arms are tired. I feel spiritually hungover. 

I have friends and family scattered across the continent and globe, all living in various degrees of “lockdown.” For some the imposed rules have been quite rigid. They’re stuck at home, some with kids whose bodies and brains are exploding with pent up energy. 

Here in Georgia, there are many that have carried on living their life as they always have. And I must confess, I judge them. I do. I think it’s wrong and reckless. But then I hear of a mom getting ticketed for simply taking her kids to the park in another part of the world and that is wrong too. Businesses are going bankrupt, and anxiety and mental health issues are spiraling in (brace yourself, I’m going to say it) unprecedented ways. 

What we have here folks is a lose- lose situation.

Livelihoods are being devastated. There are young kids trying to homeschool themselves at home alone. Depression has settled in on many. I have been horrified by some of the words callously thrown about on social media. It seems people have forgotten their own humanity as they wield their opinions carelessly. Words contain a tremendous amount of power. 

Isolation strips us of the sacred filter of communion.

Along with all of this, the fellowship of the grieving grows by the minute. I can feel their sorrow. Their loss. The devastation of being thrown into the brutality of endless missing. 

It is more important maybe than ever before to show grace. 

It isn’t always easy to show grace, especially when it isn’t deserved. But isn’t that what makes grace—grace? Being undeserved? 

Grace can only happen when a sacrifice is made. And sacrifice by its nature— hurts. Something within ones self has to die. Often it’s pride. Or the need to be right. Or a vainglory brandishing of holier- than- thou.

It’s not that grace means we are free of consequences. We cannot always escape the consequences of our actions. Truth cannot ever be cancelled out, not even by grace. Sometimes though, grace is the vehicle by which we are taken to meet Truth.

Maybe instead of unity, we should all be praying for the courage and capacity to show the ungracious— grace.

Maybe we need to be as reckless with our grace as we’ve been with our words. 

Maybe we need to guard the humanity in others as fiercely as we’ve guarded our freedoms. 

Maybe we need to experience the pain of empathy, and resist the urge to cancel our way into a vacuum.

Maybe we need to see one another’s faces instead of our profile pictures, and hear one another’s voices instead of trying to convey emotion through emojis. That time will come. It is coming. We will need one another to heal from the revelation of 2020.

None of us is handling this perfectly. All of us are broken. 

But grace, grace, and more grace.