Truth and Grace

While I'm still up not sleeping, I wanted to write about why I named this site Truth and Grace. Mainly, it came from the sermon I listened to in church yesterday, which dealt with being a "Life-Giving Farmer". In one of those funny quirks, God was reinforcing that idea of Encouragement that I wrote about in my previous post. The pastor spoke about how our words and actions can either be life-giving or death-giving. They can build up, or they can destroy.

Jesus, of course, calls on us to be life-giving.

I will admit to this. I am a critical person. I would love to be able to take the cop-out that it was how my mother was, and how her mother was before her, and her mother, and so on and so on. But in the end, it's an excuse. I have control over my own actions and words. I choose, every day, to either be critical of my husband and children (and other people) for not doing things the way I think they should, or to be encouraging and affirming, and build them up. It is much easier for me to choose the lesser path - of nit picking and criticality that makes them feel like a failure.

It's not intentional on my part - it would never be intentional to make those I love the most feel bad about themselves. It's just easy to do.

The other main teachings from yesterday's sermon were about Truth and Grace.

Truth. We all understand Truth, right? I know I understand the truth I spoke of in my last post - about my husband's stinky socks. The truth is, sometimes he's what my mother refers to as a slob. I can be honest and truth-full, and tell him he's a slob.

And that would hurt his feelings. But it's true, right? So I'm justified!

The problem is, speaking that way to my husband is death-giving. Death to love, death to my marriage, death to the intimacy between my most cherished confidant and friend.

Grace. Grace is a fairly easy concept, I think, to understand as Christians. It is by the Grace of God that we are all saved - forgiven for our sins - even those we continue to commit after being Saved. Why is it so hard, then, to extend grace to the ones closest to us? To our husbands, our children, our parents, our friends. Why is it so easy to get bogged down in hurt feelings or resentment?

The answer, I think, is that we're human. God has given us free will. He has given us the choice to live in that darker place - that death-giving place where the hard feelings fester and putrefy, and kill that which we hold most dear. He has also given us the ability, using the love He has shown us, to be grace-full to those we love. (And yes, I am intentionally writing that as grace-full (full of grace) rather than graceful (not likely to trip over your own feet and go tush over teakettle down the stairs). )

God has called us to a higher purpose. He has called us to be life-giving. To be encouraging. To let His love, agape love, shine through us so brightly it cannot be denied. We are not called to ignore the truth - it's there. Sometimes it rears it's ugly head when we would like it to just go away. But He calls us to cover that truth in grace.

Truth. And. Grace.

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