Defining Grace

Hello friends and hello June! I think of June as a month of excitement with the upcoming summer and bliss with spring-like weather (usually). It is a time for front porch sitting and outside reflection. So, let's take advantage of this time of ponderment and give some thought to grace and it's deep definition. This will be the theme of this month starting today.

Let's start out this theme with the definitions:

My concordance describes grace as an undeserved favor or gift; the undeserved forgiveness, kindness, and mercy that God gives us.

Google defines grace in many ways:

1. Smoothness and elegance of movement.

2. Courteous good will.

3. Bring honor or credit to (someone or something) by one's attendance or participation.

4. An attractively polite manner of behaving.

5. (In Christian belief) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

6. A divinely given talent or blessing.

7. A period officially allowed for payment of a sum due or for compliance with a law or condition, especially an extended period granted as a special favor.

And I'm sure that is not all. Now, let's look into these definitions:

The concordance makes it clear that we are undeserving of God's grace, which was also called favor, gift, forgiveness, kindness, and mercy in the definition. All of which fit perfectly and all of which we are certainly undeserving of.

The first definition brought to us by Google is smoothness and elegance of movement, (and just so you know I am going to relate all these ungodly definitions back to God). The word movement could be viewed as God's movement, which makes since. If you picture God moving mountains, do you picture Him struggling while pushing or lifting the mountain to move it? Or do you picture Him just waving a hand in the air, and maybe even simply looking at it, to make the metaphorical mountain to move away? I picture Him moving mountains with ease, and grace, to their respective locations.

Courteous and good will. Do I even need to direct your mind to God with this one? He is good all the time and all the time He is courteous too. Lol, did I get you there?

Bring honor or credit to (someone or something) by one's attendance or participation. When we participate in things that are Godly, like going to church or reading the word, we grow in faith. And how are we accredited righteousness? By faith! Another way this could be directed back to God is when we attend worship, we bring praise and honor to God and when we do His will, we give all the credit to Him.

An attractively polite manner of behaving. How does the Bible say we should act? This way! Act with grace.

(In Christian belief) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Yup!

A divinely given talent or blessing. Gifts of the Spirit anyone?

A period officially allowed for payment of a sum due or for compliance with a law or condition, especially an extended period granted as a special favor. Christ died for our sins, which is a debt we could never pay - that is grace. This one got me excited to direct back to God.

So, does all this sum up exactly what grace is? No, I think it has a deeper meaning then that. Grace's definition is as deep as love's definition, because it is rooted in love. When you love someone, you give them grace, act gracefully towards them, and speak gracefully to them. That is what God does to us - for us.

I think that is reason enough to smile, what about you?