No Grace

 

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.            1 Corinthians 16:23

“No Grace.”

It was a young woman’s explanation about why her new job is so hard for her to get used to.

We didn’t get to have a long conversation but what I take from that comment is that she has been raised in a family that extends grace. She was used to it. Every mistake was not an opportunity to condemn but a moment to teach.

In the minute I had with her to ask about the job she had been working at for about a month, she said that almost no one in the workplace cares about God. There are no professing Christians. No one seems to respect her faith. I did not get to ask how she was responding.

The hard part for Christians in this kind of environment is that we must display grace to others even when they do not do the same for us. This young woman is a waitress, her first part-time job as she continues with high school.  She has a great opportunity to display the grace of God to her co-workers and to her customers.

Yesterday, my husband and I went out to breakfast near our home. I felt like I must be hearing and seeing what this young waitress had described. To us, the customers, servers were all smiles.  To each other and from the kitchen, not so pretty.  Complaining and gossiping.

I wonder if just one of them would point to something positive, if one would complement the work of another, if one of them would make a positive comment about the appearance of another, or take the load off the one in pain…would there be a lifting up of the mood in that place?

Hebrews 10:24 encourages Christians to “Consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.” I understand that in these difficult settings, where there is little or no grace being shown to us, this might be a hard thing to do. We need to try!

When God is a part of who we are, we can demonstrate grace and strive to spur others on to love and good works. When we extend grace to those who are acting so poorly they don’t seem to deserve it – we are acting like God did for us.

Where there is no acknowledgement of God, we cannot expect to find grace. Still, we can treat others’ mistakes as opportunities to display the grace of God rather than moments to condemn.

Jesus is full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) If we hear, “no grace” said about us, we are not conforming to His image.

Who, in your workplace, home, school, or church, needs to receive the grace of God from you?