Things We Don’t Understand

With justice we receive what human law says we deserve.

Mercy is forgiveness shown by persons who have the power to punish us.

Grace is what we get when we get when we are given gifts beyond mercy. It is something we do not easily comprehend, if at all.

It is neither the brutality of human justice nor what sometimes passes for mercy. It is greater.

Grace is beyond mercy. It is kindness and compassion which we may not deserve, but which some other person or Being knows we ought to possess.

Grace is when our souls receive every blessing of Solomon’s Song of Songs. And more. Grace is greater than being a lily among thorns. It surpasses the beauty of the rose of Sharon. The flight of an eagle cannot match it.

Grace is larger than the skies. It is beyond any flight of our imaginations.

We think grace is hidden from us in a cupboard, locked in a bank vault. Something we could never possibly receive. If there was a time it was ours’, we feel it has left us. We live in harsh days. We are bombarded with hate and fear all around us. We feel so overwhelmed by mass death, illness, war, starvation and goodness knows what other ills besetting our world, that we have forgotten ourselves.

We have slipped away from our true moorings. We allow ourselves to be bullied and battered by what is wrong in this world.

Rather, you have a job to do.

The first part of that job is to accept grace.

Know that you are a good human being.

Then, live it.

Return to the place in your heart and soul and mind where you knew that you fundamentally were — and remain — an honestly good man or woman or child. Return to the place where happiness and joy and laughter shone from your soul. Who better than you to restore yourself and your world to being a good and safe place?

You are responsible to yourself for yourself. For opening up your eyes. For giving yourself permission to be the good person you have been, for starters.

That is only the start.

That is who you were. It is the time to move on to who you are now in order to become the person you are supposed to be. It’s true that we must live one day at a time. Why live in the negativity of earlier days rather than the grace of today? Your willingness to live in what is good today helps more good come to the future.

Not just your future.

The future. You are doing good for all people living and yet to live.

You may be a junkie hooked on politics, business and whatever else appears to have tanked over the last few years. It’s time to give up your drugs of spiritual negativity. You are having too much fun killing what is good about yourself and other people in our world.

I give you permission to stop.

Stop being negative.

Open the vault in your heart where you have locked away compassion and kindness. Roll the tumblers. Turn the key. Put your back into it pulling back the door on its rusted, creaky hinges.

Be willing to be released from negativity.

Be willing to restore your life. You have the capacity to be prolific and successful in entirely new ways. If you open your life today, what new bigger, better things can come to you tomorrow?

We won’t know until we get to tomorrow, but the very idea beats an endless downward spiral of negativity. It takes a very short period for that to lead to ever more negativity, ever more careless thinking and bad behavior.

You deserve better from yourself.

I recently ran into an acquaintance who was preparing her adult child to continue her university education. In the middle of a world where so many are hellbent on their own destruction, this woman and her child were working for the future. They use the grace flowing into their lives.

Are you?