Do unto others

Grace. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Why is it so hard for us to show grace to other people? My mom is working registration for an annual conference for a major denomination. Does she make mistakes? Yes. She’s only human. But the crap that she gets from people is unbelievable. And these are mostly clergy. Clergy! People are human, they’re going to mess up. And yet, when they do, how do we react? I think most of the time we react out of our own sin natures. We do many things…get mad, abuse, berate, criticize and put down. But we fail to do the one thing we want others to do when we screw up. Extend grace. It’s so easy to do, and yet so hard, because it runs contrary to our nature. When I screw up, I really want people to extend me grace. To treat me with kindness when I don’t deserve it. But do I extend the same grace? No. Not most of the time. It’s so much easier to get upset at people than to see them as God sees them. People who need grace just as much as I do. In that, I can be Christ to people. Simply by extending simple grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Grace like rain. We are given grace that we might extend it to others.

If only it came naturally.