Un-understandable Hope

I saw a beautiful thing this last week.

Grace.

As news broke of Fred Phelps' failing health and eventual death, I saw many within the Church expressing their desire and hope to extend him, and those who might share similar understandings, grace.

It is such a beautiful thing. It is a shining example of what is possible when Christians choose grace, peace, hope, and love as reaction; no matter how difficult it might be.

Then emotions I didn't expect came about - sadness, jealously, frustration.

Me? A person who has claimed to be about radical and scandalous grace.

As I've taken moments to understand why these feelings came, I realized I longed for that grace being extended to him. I was jealous of not being extended the same for lesser infractions. I was frustrated for other individuals in communities not shown this grace. Instead being burdened and labeled.

It's a strange place to be on this side of grace.

I keep going back to a song by Noah Gundersen - it seems to tap into this frustration, this ache, this longing, this cry that rattles deep within me... for grace. A few of the lines go:

Jesus, Jesus, there are those that say they love you

But they have treated me so damn mean

And I know you said ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’

But sometimes I think they do

And I think about you

If all the heathens burn in hell, do all their children burn as well?

What about the Muslims and the gays and the unwed mothers?

What about me and all my friends?

Are we all sinners if we sin?

Does it even matter in the end if we’re unhappy?

I wonder if this small moment of grace being shown to an individual like Fred Phelps could snowball towards others the Church would normally be quick to distance themselves from?

Though admittedly, I’m more cynic than optimist - I desperately hope so.

Because that’s grace – it’s an un-understandable hope.

Grace is both the giving and the receiving of the undeserved. Real grace works in ways that we truly hope it would, while at the exact same time being the very thing we struggle to accept. We want it for others but we don’t want it for ourselves; then want it for ourselves but not for another. Grace is for all of us. It is that simple and expansive. It is both costly and cheap – the priceless gift from the Almighty.

So may we join with creation to spring forth with new life with the changing of seasons -a life full of grace for and to the world and ourselves.