AMAZING GRACE
By LEWIS SMEDES

"Grace, in my experience, is especially for people who feel, not that things on the outside are all wrong, but that they are all wrong on the inside. When we have gummed up our own lives, and we can't seem to find a good word to say for ourselves, grace says that God will accept us and never reject us. Acceptance, you see, is what grace is really all about. I believe that deepest need that any of us have is to know that we are accepted and we will never be rejected.

Most of us have an underground trembling anxiety that, if people could see us for what we really are, they would not accept us. And we are also anxious that God, who does see us for what we really are will look at us and say: "You are not acceptable." But God comes with another word. Whether you're acceptable or not doesn't matter. What matters is this: "You are accepted, no matter what." Grace means that when God says Yes to us even when we say No to ourselves, His Yes is so strong that our No about ourselves does not have a chance.

Grace says: No, you are never stuck with what you have stuck yourself with. You are accepted. You are accepted no matter how much you have gummed things up.

I admit that grace cuts through the hard crust of logic. Hard-boiled common sense will tell you that there is too much wrong with you for you to be acceptable to the demanding Maker of the universe. Common sense tells us that we are stuck with whatever we stuck ourselves with. Grace is the revolutionary reality. It's God's desire to 'unstick' us from whatever we have stuck ourselves with.

Let me say it again: Grace is God's resounding 'yes' to you while you are saying 'no' to yourself. And his 'yes' to you is so resounding that it drowns out your 'no' that you say to yourself.

Grace means that God will always be for you; he will never be against you. God will always say yes to you, he will never say no to you even when you are saying no to yourself. You will never mess up your life so badly that God will say no to you. You can live each day breathing the fresh air of his grace.

The grace of God does not always come to us in a church where we might expect it. It may come through to you as you are stuck in heavy traffic. It may slide silently up beside you while a crowd around you is busy chattering. Then again it could come to when you are all alone with yourself and the window of your spirit is open to God's grace. Then you will be lifted by the word of grace: You are accepted. You are accepted. You are accepted. Yes, you are accepted. That's grace."