If you are reading this column I am pretty sure you have an interest in exploring what God has to say to you today through me or someone else who might appear in this place on a Friday. Or may be it is just out of curiosity that you landed on this page. Regardless of the reason of why you are reading these notes from me, I am sure something will come out of it for the better. That is a lot presumptuous of me to conclude the end result in the life of someone I don’t even know. I call it the grinding Grace.
But then what makes me say that is the strong belief beyond the logic of tolerance or reason in Grace that brings out the best every time. The only thing I can fall back on is the Grace of God no matter what situation I am in. It shall never go wrong or overboard to the extent I feel embarrassed or misrepresented. Grace is reliable and always available. What makes me so distastefully, for some, confident on what I say is the experience that I am blessed with love from those I have met and God who came to my life. Therefore I have come to this conclusion.
The only thing we are expected to do well and right is to love. We can add to that love God and our neighbor if that helps your Christian appetite. Then we have the best commandment of the Bible. Can we love someone right and well? There is no way of knowing it. Therefore do it anyway you know best and it is going to be right. This surety is what I dare to call my distasteful interpretation of Grace. What makes this right is the grinding nature of the Grace of God.
Our natural tendencies and cravings of everyday life are sometimes tough to deal with. The houses we own, the things we purchase, the loyalties we keep and the Theologies we adhere to make us choose separation of the other based on our preferences. The law of God is simple and easy to follow. But we have created binding restrictions to limit genuine love. This is why grace becomes a grinding process of our hidden selfishness. But always if we allow the grinding, grace will succeed.
Do you always understand your spouses, the one you fell in love with for the best person in the world? Then the list can be expanded with the names of our teachers, to preachers, to neighbors, to leaders and so on. The issues each of these people we have found names for are different from ours and that is why it is hard to love them. They are not anything like our own problems and therefore unbearable. That is why the grace becomes a grinding presence of God that will eat away the bite we have within us when we try to love the other.
Allow grace. I will promise you to your disappointment;(may be) it will grind every teeth you bite someone with. Now that you have read the column, I am sure it will grind your biting teeth today and every time you are about to bark at someone or pull down someone else. Whether you believe it or not, just because you read this, it is going to haunt you for the rest of your life grinding away the sharp words and comments, thoughts and fears you encounter.
That is why I call Grace is Grinding. It does good beyond the measure of what I can imagine and sometimes to my dislike. But it is still worth allowing grace in life. For it can transform us for the rest of our lives. Allow Grinding Grace.
Be grateful to God for all the blessings in life.
Author: +Jos Tharakan | XIV Bishop of Idaho
