This is a meditation on chapter 17 from our Way of Life.

Be Gracious with Everyone, Generous in Spirit, and Forgive Quickly.

In a world where there is so much we cannot know, I am invited to choose to be gracious with everyone. I am to extend grace to those who are close to me and those who wish me harm. We live in an age where hateful and violent people are grabbing power. Their words and deeds are sowing death, violence, and fear wider and deeper into our world than I have seen in my lifetime. How do I choose to be gracious to those who use the name of Christ to call for such un-Christlike things? How do I fill my reserves of love so that offering grace as an option to those whom it is hard to love? When am I allowed to choose my safety over the love and example of Jesus?

In my life, I return to the Gospels, the Scriptures, and Holy Week again and again. Within these pages and days there is an inescapable call, an invitation, to follow Jesus. To follow Him into becoming like Jesus. The same Jesus who forgave His crucifiers without them asking. He did not lash out against those who flogged His back raw. He undid Peter’s violence when He healed the ear of the High Priest’s servant in the garden. This is the Jesus I return to over and over again, who has grace for everyone. These are moments and snapshots of the reality that our God is gracious with everyone. As I become like Christ, I should expect that I also will become gracious with everyone. Many of us today live in places of rising hatred and violence – and yet, we are called to be gracious with everyone.

“We choose to be gracious with everyone. Being gracious is an act of faith. It is us saying that we trust God to restore some of what is broken.”
From the Urban Monastic Way of Life

I feel frustration and anger swell up within me. It tells me that I’m allowed some hatred. It tells me that I get to, that I am right, to withhold grace and forgiveness. Yet, for my belief to be real it must be embodied. It was not an idea that died on the cross and rose from the grave. It was Jesus, with all His flesh and bones. I look up to Jesus upon the cross and I am broken again, because it was His love that brought the cross into view. The cup of death could not be passed. The evil of death could not be overcome other than through the mystery of Easter. Within the heart of that mystery, we see that love overcomes hate. Does my weakness let me mingle hatred with love? So where does this leave me?

Our God believes I am worthy of grace, and so there is grace for me. My whole being is laid out, and grace is still given to me. It may be that God has faith in me. It may be that the love of God creates a longing within me for restored and deepening relationships. I choose to act in faith – to extend grace, in faith, to all that I can. I will choose to stand for love in a world of rising hatred. I choose to embody and speak hope against the hate that dehumanizes anyone our God loves. Maybe God has faith that we will rise to this moment. Being gracious is an act of faith.

Photo Credit
Paul Prins on 7 January 2010 in Fort Myers, Floridia, United States.