Jesus as Grace Fulfilled

I've been writing about how Jesus gives us insight into the direction of God's grace; that all of grace is from God and towards God's creation.  All that comes from God -- even those "corrective" moments when it feels like God is raising a voice of anger at us -- is grace.

Please let's not limit God to only having "nice" as a manner.  But let's also not limit our appreciation for God such that we continue to portray what we deem as bad for us or as punishment of us from some attribute of God absent that same grace that comes in the person of Jesus.

The prophets wrote often about God's wrath.  But it is our reading that misses grace and not God's actions.  Wrath without grace is not even the kind of spiritual maturity we hope for ourselves.  We must be careful when we think that God acts differently -- some times with grace, some times without -- towards us.  In the same way that parents strive for the same heart no matter the concern their children present.  Isn't there a smidgen of grace when we take away the iPhone, the car keys, the weekend plans?

It takes spiritual maturity to insure grace in our lives of parenting, collegiality and cooperative efforts.  But grace does not boast and is too often unrecognized as companion to correction, rejection.  Grace also will not coerce its way into our human interactions.  Without a commitment to grace -- which looks mostly like love -- our responses to challenge and disappointment sink into petty retribution and revenge.

In order for grace to be embodied in our actions we must commit to it, trust it, hunger for it, share it.  All of these and more are how God comes to us in the person of Jesus.  In every way grace comes but especially as the incarnate one we can see God's commitment.  It is not easy but it is God's commitment that Jesus' cries from the cross help us to see.

We may not recognize it but our freedom to choose is the result of God's grace in how we are entrusted and un-coerced in love.  God's hunger, God's desire is love and when and wherever that love goes unnoticed or is dismissed God's heart cries.  Whether in tears or gift God's grace is abundant.  Like seeds in the parable of the sower broadcast beyond the intended garden furrows and fences onto all sorts and conditions of soil and sun, read "life."

It is in the person of Jesus that all these ways that God is graceful find human embodiment.  The good news is that Jesus was just a fully human as divine.  Just as much us as God.  His uniqueness is our uniqueness.  His perfected, ours yet to be.  But we are each uniquely and all together graced and capable of committing to it, trusting it, hungering for it, sharing it.