Showing grace. What does that mean? It means not passing judgement. It means forgiving. Showing grace means extending forgiveness when it is not earned or deserved.
I recently read an announcement from someone that I follow and the news shocked me. I couldn’t believe what I was reading and I began questioning everything I had believed about this person before. My mind quickly jumped to judgement, anger, betrayal, pride and so many other feelings. I was bouncing around between feeling sorry for this person and feeling mad.
What I wasn’t feeling right away was grace.
I began reading through comment after comment and noticing all the negativity and judgement. I read comments that were bitter, hurtful, and condemning. What I didn’t see anyone show was grace and understanding.
That was my cue. I noticed that I, too, reacted immediately in a way that I wasn’t proud of. My first reaction should have been grace and I wish it would be that reaction more often.
Examples of Showing Grace
Showing grace means not passing judgement when someone gets divorced, has an affair, changes their mind, or disagrees with you. Showing grace means forgiving a wrong word or hurtful mistake. To show grace means we forgive someone when they don’t ask for it, don’t deserve it and don’t earn it.
There are so many great examples of grace being extended. I’ve seen people accept others with all of their faults. I’ve seen stories of redemption and change that seem too amazing to be true. Time after time I see people show love to others in situations that seem too hard for me to understand.
Why Grace is Good
Why should we show grace and forgiveness to others, especially those who don’t deserve it? Because we are all human. We all make mistakes and fall far from perfect most of the time. We’ve all had times when we said something we wish we hadn’t, pretended to be something we weren’t and made mistakes that we can’t take back.
Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie
When we extend an unearned forgiveness to someone, we show love. It is a way to say, “I don’t understand your reason why but I’m not going to judge”. I think our current culture has too much judgement and too much criticism. We rush to call someone out and condemn their mistakes before we fully understand their reason why. Every word and every action gets judged, often in a very public way.
I think it would do us all good to understand that reserving judgement frees us from negativity and anger. Reserving judgement makes more room for joy. Learning to show grace to others is important because we replace anger with empathy. We switch from saying, “I can’t believe you did that” to “I’ll let it slide because I’ve made mistakes too”. We extend forgiveness because we have also been forgiven when we didn’t deserve it.
If you are a believer of God, you are a walking example of His grace. Your everyday life shows the beautiful things being done only because of the unearned forgiveness that was extended to you. Regardless of your beliefs, grace and forgiveness should change the way you live. It has the power to remove guilt and the ability to change our hearts.
I am working on this. I want to be slower to judge and to react. When I hear a sad story or see something that someone does that makes me angry, I want my first reaction to be understanding. I am striving to share some of the grace that has been given to me.
Challenge for the week:
With all the tension going on in the news, politics and social media it is easy to react with anger and judgement. This week, when you see something or someone that makes you angry and does something wrong, try to think about the feelings and reason behind it. Maybe that person has been hurt or lost hope or simply got careless. Try to extend grace, even if they don’t deserve it, and notice how it changes your perspective and helps you to see the good.