In response to grace-grinders

god-of-small-things

A couple years, I had the chance to ask the late Mike Yaconelli about grace, and what he said stuck with me ever since. (His answer appeared in the December 2003 Covenant Companion)

Here’s the reality—we do not believe in grace. We are scared to death of grace. We are worried that it is going to be abused or misused. And of course, we only worry about that after we are in. And then we decide to help God by becoming grace monitors and grace police and by sort of saying, “God’s really busy and he has got a lot to do, so we will make sure that nobody else gets in.”

We make all of these rules, just like the Pharisees did, that determine whether or not you are functioning in grace.

Our secular pagan culture doesn’t make us get drunk, it makes us dull. It robs us of our creativity. We don’t sit around thinking, how can I redeem this situation? We have lost the power of the tiny, of the small, of the little thoughtful things that we can do for each other that will make all the difference in the world.

That’s what happens in a pagan culture. It’s not that we run around doing these horrible sins. It’s that we don’t run around doing these little acts of grace that we ought to be doing. We have lost the power of the tiny, of the small, of the little thoughtful things that we can do for each other that will make all the difference in the world.