Tag: grace

Day 24 Lenten Meditation: Grace




As ever we needed grace, we need it right now, in the middle of this pandemic.

Divine Grace means “Love and Mercy without us having done anything to earn it.” As a Quaker, though, I can’t help but think of “that of God in everyone”, and concentrate on what we need to do to manifest grace on earth.

In Divine grace, love embraces all of humanity, not because of their pecuniary worth but because they are, simply, a miracle. It extends  a hand regardless of what the other can do for you. It means being bigger than squabbles, greater than divisions.

In Divine grace, mercy means relinquishing power over other people and holding only goodness. It means accepting their faults and looking beyond them at their humanity.*

We need divine grace right now. We need to see ourselves as denizens of a world that is suffering even as we are, perhaps suffering more — a world where we are all nations, all ages, all genders, all socioeconomic statuses, all religions and none. We need to offer love and mercy, not because we will receive it back, but because it is demanded of us.



*Mercy doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a victim. You can protect yourself from harm without denigrating the other. 

Day 34 Reflection: Grace

“There but for the grace of God go I.”

I hate this phrase with a white-hot passion. First of all, it paints God’s grace as favoritism that preserves some from trials and tribulations while smiting others. Or perhaps it hints at some virtue the speaker possesses that keeps a retributive God from smiting them. Or judges someone for handling their tribulations in a way that makes their life worse.

No matter, the phrase paints a deity that plays favorites in handing out grace and a world of the holy haves and have-nots. 

This is not how grace works at all. The Wikipedia entry for divine grace defines it as:

[…] the divine influence which operates in humans to regenerate and sanctify, to inspire virtuous impulses, and to impart strength to endure trial and resist temptation; and as an individual virtue or excellence of divine origin. (Wikipedia, 2015).

In this context, grace gives us resilience in life. This makes sense, because one of the purposes of religion is to give people meaning in life, particularly helping to make sense of life when bad things happen. 

So divine grace is something all of us have, whether or not we would call it that. It is the sense of greater-than-ourselves that we rely on in the face of loss. Grace plays no favorites; it does not reward some and neglect others. 

“There but for the grace of God go I” is a very comforting construct, because it suggests that God protects the believer from harm or loss. None of us, however, are immune; God does not arrange the lives of Her followers.  It’s a good thing that real divine grace exists to help us through the bad times.