Grace Begins at Home

To fully appreciate the title of this post, you need to know that I live alone.

In keeping with the-goals-that-I-happened-to-set-while-the-sun-was-shining-on-what-the-rest-of-society-calls-January-1st, I just finished David McCullough’s book 1776.  It was a good book, I enjoyed it, I like having a deeper knowledge of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware (not crossing Delaware, that would have taken longer, especially since he began the journey in Pennsylvania), but this is not about the book.  This is about grace.

You see, if my calculations are correct, I have read 574 pages worth of books and short stories since the first of the year.  My goal is to read 50 pages of something every day.  Today is the 18th, so if I were up on my goal, I would have read 900 pages by now.  You may notice that 574 is a significantly smaller number than 900.  Indeed, I am only at 63.78% of my goal.  That is a solid D.  Not so good.  My mother always told me, “I don’t care about your grades, but you are too smart for C’s.”  Sorry mom, it turns out that may not be true.

This is where grace comes in.  My first instinct is to say that I will be failing at my goal until I make up the 326 pages I have lost up to now in addition to keeping up with my 50 pages per day going forward.  It is only January, and already that would be a fairly onerous request.  I need to offer myself some grace.  I need to allow myself that the goal, while set in terms of numbers, is not actually about reading 18,300 pages by the time Ryan Seacrest next shows up in Times Square.  The goal is actually to read more than I have been reading and to be intentional about it.  In fact, if I were to insist on making up the lost pages, I would probably leave the effort behind before the month is out.

Grace is the second chance, but it is not only that.  Grace is forgiveness, but it is not only that.  Grace is seeing value where some would see only empty space (the 326 empty pages).  Grace is showing love, whether or not that love is deserved (who, after all, loves a D?).

In a much wider sense than just my self-improvement goal, grace is a necessity for changing the world for the better.  You see, I believe in people.  I believe that almost every person would do better next time if only he or she can dig out from under last time.  How freeing would it be told, “forget last time”?  How would the chains be broken if we could just hear, “it is in the past, let’s move forward”?   This is not to say that there is no room for justice, but there is always room for grace.

Now, leaving the 326 pages behind, I ask you, what book comes next?

 

ED: I just updated this post to correct my math.  As my lovely brother reminds me in his comment below, 900-574=326, not 226.  In my defense, I went to college for music, where we usually aren’t expected to count past 4, and then off to seminary where we don’t deal with many numbers beyond 3, 7, 12, and 40.