the fruit of grace, the fruit of fire?

What is grace?

i have struggled much of my life to understand it.

many tell that it is the most beautiful gift of all.

others have no need to look up the word mercy, for they have decided the two mean the very same thing.

there are friends who say that grace is a force, a substance — an ability to enter into and perform something. An inhabitation of power and skill from an Outside force. I rather go for this definition.

Some define it with their life as permission to be just as self-centered as you desire, a free ticket to Pinnochio’s carnival, if you will, and the secure seatbelt of knowing the Gepetto in the sky will pick you right back up and hug you every time you reveal you care very little for Him at all.

I like the photo above because I see grace when God’s creation whirs by, stops for a moment and dines on a delicious piece of fruit, and I remember that I am no artist compared to Him. And he shares His work for our enjoyment.

Many books are wrote on the subject.

Most of the music on our car antenna airwaves sings about grace, be it Christ-ian or not.

The invitation: feel a warm hug all around you. Know that you are valuable. Treat yourself well for this is the meaning of life.

But Jesus sometimes cracked a whip, knocked the tables, threw out the merchants, cut the heart with daggered words to those who played games with His Father’s order.

God blazes in unquenchable fire, he returns and cuts to pieces those would not be his subjects and show Him the respect He is due. He takes back the talents from those who waste them. He demands an explanation from those who fear him and who fear him not.

One of His names is Judge. He is the Lion as well as the Lamb. His hair is white and eyes are of burning. A sword comes out of His mouth. And His enemies become a place for Him to place His feet upon.

. . . . .

but none of this washes away his tender moment with the prostitue and eternally bleeding woman. His comment to Peter that He would be restored once he was sifted and proven false. His weeping for Israel that they would yet turn their ear and eyes and face towards him.

surely He is full of love. But even love is a separate word from grace.

some say grace is the opposition to work and reward. And yet God does not stop working, or rewarding those who do work for Him. Neither does He stop forewarning about a day when work will be evaluated.

I say that even if every bit of those rocky moments in Scripture are actually a part of His fire-sided heart — when he tells the sick one to sin no more (after just healing the person) so that worse conditions might not visit them in response., when He tells the churches in revelations he will remove their lampstands if they return not to their first love and reject the teachings and deeds of false shepherds, when He threatens lakes of fire alongside with his enemies for those who shrink away and maintain not courage in Him — I say that even then He has been gracious, more than fair, more than helpful, more than kind.

For every time he allows our tastebuds to sample nourishment on a cool day, the fact that He’s come so many time and in so many ways to reach out a branch of saving, He has been what many others call the deliverer of grace.

The problem arises when we feel the need to choose one over the other: Either God is kind or He is harsh. His heart is love or it is fury.

For the danger would be rejecting our King because we became so enamoured with ourselves as the object of His presumed love affair, that if he ever clearly dealt with one of us harshly, we would skitter away like angry, satiated, annoyed little birds, declaring that this is not gracious, that this can not be our God.

and yet, what of His ways being higher than our own?

i am no good messenger with a good life to tell the world how God is, with my virtue in tow to testify to the truth of it all.

just a thinker who is not able to sweep many things under the rug when they seem oh so important to the drama lines of everything.