What is "Grace"?
I received an invitation to visit the Holy Land this spring - out of the blue. We are leaving sometime in early April. Woo-hoo! It struck me that visiting an unusual place is made a better experience if one takes the time to learn some of the local language, and become familiar with important day to day words. Like learning local expressions for "hello" and "good bye", and "thank you", perhaps even words like "beer"; and then after beer the next most important phrase to learn is "men's room".
The Christian faith has its own daily vocabulary, and it is helpful when trying to journey through it to learn some of the basic words. "Grace".
Jesus told a simple story about a shepherd who had 100 sheep. 99 of them were safe and one got lost. The shepherd set out to look for the lost sheep. Simple story, simple point. The shepherd started looking for the sheep long before the sheep started looking for the shepherd, perhaps even long before the sheep realized it was lost.
God starts looking for us long before we start looking for God - that is the beginning of what we mean by grace.
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