Why Grace?
©2014 Jeremy Lai
I choose Grace again and again. It's inescapable. Not only because it is my middle name but because it is the call on this world. It is the concept we all are living under if we only just grabbed the keys that hang around our necks. We all have grace keys. We all have grace moments and we all have the ability to pass on a grace key to someone else.
I freely talk about that time I did the unthinkable. That time that swept me off my feet and made me think I was made out of heart break and endless pain. Comments were made from sideliners, from the grace-holders who kept it hidden in fists instead of in open palms, and I was trashed. I wasn't worth the risk or the comments of nothing more than disgust. I was that bride who chose to throw the veil in the trash can because I couldn't fathom a way out. So I torched a union for something that glittered gold in moments. And the glitter moments, they were real and messed up, because that is how it is with people who are lost...they make unions in pain and they connect over loss and emotions run ragged from running.
Running from Grace.
Everyone was running from Grace.
Everyone around that scene were grace-key-holders, stuffing them in the deepest pockets they could find because they couldn't comprehend how passing a key to three messed up spirits could solve the mystery they couldn't relate to.
And when it was all said and done and everyone was in their corners of destructed love and lies .... it was all just a hopeless mess.
But something happens in the hopeless. Grace-keys shine , and those who can get over the egos, the pain, the denial and the rift of people trashing, they grasp the key and hold it out...they would rather pass on grace then let anymore of this continue.
And I tell you this, because this Canadian-Church raised girl in a generation of God-Isn't-Real, found more in a Grace that is gifted than in the solutions of this world.
I tell you this because I am watching all these broken stories and I want to hold my key high and shout Grace at the sky. I want to cry with the hearts rather than ignore them. I want to gather the men and women who found solace in each other, broke one another and tell them I understand. That Grace understands. That there isn't a messed up moment that couldn't be redeemed. I want to tell them that I have seen miracles and I have seen new life come out of the cemetery of my dead one.
I want to sing and dance Grace all over these hearts because they need it, they will thrive in it, and I know that my Grace giving God has more in store than just blood and a cross. There is everything fresh and renewed and that show, it is not sold out, because it is yours and you are the honoured guest to a Grace-Event made just for you.
So stop withholding Grace from each other, because that cheating wife, and that sneaking man, and that desperate husband just needed Gods Grace.
I was that wife, and I couldn't have remarried a husband and found a whole new life if it wasn't for the messed up wedding and the Grace that was given to me.
Give Grace like you would give water to a thirsty man. Give grace even when the betrayal is deep and the circumstances bloody.
Give Grace because the alternative is a war within your spirit that you will never overcome.
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The key I am wearing is from http://www.thegivingkeys.com where keys are made, bought and given. Read their story http://www.thegivingkeys.com/pages/about-us
I will be giving this key away this season to someone who needs Grace ... which is all of us.