Why Grace?

As I look back on the past few posts I’ve written I think there is one central idea I’ve been hinting at, and that is the concept of grace. To be honest I never really “got” grace, it just didn’t make sense to me. I come from a family of workers, I’ve always believed that you had to work for what you got, that handouts were never an option. So then I come along the idea of grace in my faith and I’m thinking “seriously God, you mean there’s nothing I have to do?” It just never really made much sense to me. Now, looking at the posts I’ve written I can see the concept of grace clearly, it’s not that there’s nothing we can do, it’s that God doesn’t want us to do anything. God doesn’t want us to “clean up our act” before coming to Him, He just wants us to make a choice. Once choice, that’s all it is, and that choice is to follow Him instead of going your own way. Looking at Hosea there’s no part where God says “Well, before you come back to me, boy do you have a long list of things to do.” No, it doesn’t work that way at all, instead God’s just asking us to come back, no clean up necessary just a promise of commitment. Really, grace isn’t a simple handout like I thought it was, as I come to dig in my Bible a bit more I’ve found that grace is God’s way of accepting us despite our faults and never giving up. Synonyms for grace are “poise, refinement, charm, and beauty.” Very often when we need God the most and come to Him we are not that way at all, but by His grace alone we can be perfect in His sight.