more on grace

The other evening in our discipleship group we talked about grace. Defining grace wasn't necessarily easy, but each person understood what grace is, even if they didn't have the words, because each time they experienced grace from someone, whether God or someone around them, they knew exactly what it was. As I've thought about our discussion and stories from that evening over the past couple of days, I noticed a recurring theme: grace was an active response or approach to them at specific times or in specific moments. Grace always built them up, helped them to experience God's love and presence, allowed them to feel hope or acceptance.
Grace is not passive, it's an engagement into the lives of people, or the events around you, speaking or acting in ways that creates an atmosphere or presence where others are lifted up and community is strengthened. Grace is the giving of respect and honour, it is acts of love.
Grace is powerful in our time because of how often un-grace is shown. Living at a time where the internet and social media are so powerful and shaming is more and more common, grace is becoming a counter cultural way of living and relating to each other.
God is the source of grace. God fills our world and lives with grace. Our role is to allow God's grace to flow through us into the world around us. But it's more than just allowing grace to flow through us, as followers of Jesus, it's about actively looking for ways to offer grace and to fight for grace so that our families, our churches and our communities become places of grace.