Painful Grace

Yes, painful grace.

Grace, by it's very nature, is born out of pain. It's only relevant in the face of hurt or failure or something bad like that. Grace is for when you forget your wife's birthday, not when you get her a nice present. So the idea of painful grace is kind of redundant. But I like it anyway because we often throw the word around like its nothing.

We (I) need to be reminded that grace isn't just this cool thing that God does to make things better. It's not simple. It's not sweet. There is a painful price paid for grace. That's why the cross is so meaningful. The graphic, gruesome, bloody death of Jesus shows me full well how much grace costs. I can picture God saying "this much Jim, this much". The movie "The Passion" is excellent in considering the cost of grace.

To digress--Muslims believe that God forgives sins by fiat--meaning He just forgives them from His desk in heaven. Kinda just like "yeah, you're forgiven...next".
No pain. No cost. No sacrifice =No grace.

.......

Many folks at Solid Rock have shown me painful grace these last few weeks. It's hard for them to "like" the decision that I've made. Truth be told, they don't like it. It hurts. But there has been grace. Grace that will leave the door open for God to comfort and reassure.

Well, I'm kinda 1/2way through a thought but I'm getting so tired.




Here's another thought that I haven't finished flushing out but thought worth throwing out there for something to chew on:
Grace can only come from a wounded person. A lot of people have trouble giving grace because they refuse to admit that they've been hurt.


Also completely unrelated to anything is this following game website where you can name all 232 players in the baseball hall of fame. It took like two weeks but I finally can get them all.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/mlbhalloffamers.php