Grace…..it’s something I don’t understand.  I know all the definitions. “Grace is getting a gift you don’t deserve and not getting the punishment you do deserve.” “Grace is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” “Grace is Jesus dying on a cross when we were still shaking our fists at God.”  “Grace is beauty and mercy all rolled up in one.”  I have the intellectual understanding.

But what does grace look like?

Some years ago, one of my favorite bands was Out of the Grey.  They released an album called Shape of Grace; the title track spoke of a man seeing the shape of grace and coming alive for the first time. I’ve loved the thought of that phrase ever since.  Does grace have a shape?  Is it something I can wrap my arms around and hold?  Can I wrap it up in a pretty box and give it away?  How does it feel? How does it smell?  Can the intangible be known and defined?

Part of my fascination recently has been sparked by an unspoken hunger in me for grace in my world.  I see God extending grace to me and to others around me every day.  There’s grace in the sunshine and the rain that falls on all of us.  There’s grace in my children’s laughter, my husband’s hugs, my cat’s purr.  There’s grace in my quiet times with God when He simply shows up and I don’t have a thing to say.

What I’m missing is grace among the children of God.  I’ve become painfully aware of the lack of grace in many circles that I run in.  We are too quick to point out the faults in each other, while insisting that our own faults are no big deal.  We want forms filled out correctly or requests can’t be fulfilled, but if the office worker makes a mistake, then the rest of us just have to be gracious and understand.  We assume the worst possible motives of each other when things don’t turn out the way we hoped they would, or when someone makes a decision we don’t agree with.  The lack of grace is astonishing….and it saddens me.

So, I’m looking.  I want to see grace in my real world.  Grace with skin on.  Grace with a shape.  Grace in me.  This part of my blog will be accounts of grace when I see them in an effort to wrap my head around what grace looks like.  I pray I’ll recognize it when I see it.

Ultimately, the shape of grace is a cross on a hill with an innocent man bleeding and dying for me and for you.  Grace took form when that man shed his glorious robes and compressed his infinite being into the shape of a tiny, messy baby.  And grace ends in the infinite joy of God and His children enjoying each other in a world made perfect by Grace Himself.

Ah…the shape of grace.  All too well explained and yet largely absent in God’s graceless children.  I think if I only truly understood what grace really is then I would be more gracious myself.  If I actually saw the shape of ungrace in me and felt the sting of sacrifice that grace required to love me anyway, then I could extend more grace to those around me.  I vastly underestimate how big ungrace is, how ugly, how insidious, how costly.

I have no grasp of the reach of grace to pick me up, dust me off, clean me up, and present me in God’s throne room as a beloved child.  And I have no concept of the power of grace to overcome the darkest strongholds of hate, addiction, pain, suffering, and bondage in our world.  It’s what makes God’s church unique in the world, and what is most painfully lacking in congregations everywhere.  Where sound doctrine, electric preaching and fancy programs fail, it’s what brings the prostitutes, the beaten down, the adulterous, the cheaters, and the hopelessly lost to the healing hands of Christ.  It’s arms of God that catch us when we fall.  Not if we fall…WHEN we fall.

I’m looking for the shape of grace.