Once upon a time, fifteen years ago (wow, that makes me feel old!) when I lived in Chicago, I started a project. Actually, I started it my senior year of college, but to go back that far makes me feel even older. So, Chicago. Every six months or I would choose an attribute of God and focus intensely on that one attribute. When I was 23, I studied everything I could on God’s forgiveness. I spent a short while trying to figure out what meekness meant in Matthew 5. That one? Every writer seems to have a different definition of the word.
Not that I could ever exhaust the study of any one aspect of God. We have all eternity for that.
So fifteen years ago in Chicago, my focus was God’s beauty. I lived on one of the poorest blocks in the city. I could tell you some interesting stories of things I saw there… But God was everywhere. In the voices of the cranky riders on the rush hour bus, in the light reflecting off the buildings – our modern day Tower of Babel at times, in the waves on a windy day on Lake Michigan. There was a rock I’d sit on that became my “prayer closet.” I had to climb to get there, which added to the adventure, but from there I was alone in the city. The background picture on my Facebook profile was taken from a few yards south of that spot. The waves would drown out the sounds of the city. It was just me and God and it was perfect.
Then I moved to Texas and started seminary. Life hasn’t slowed down. Until now. In the quiet of quarantine, I had a conversation with someone a few days ago, and she mentioned a “prayer closet.” It’s funny how a statement made just right can bring back a memory. I had forgotten about that spot in Chicago and my habit of studying God’s attributes. In seminary, I studied what the professors told me to study. After seminary I studied my people and put together Bible studies based on what they asked for or what the church was studying. Now that I’m back in seminary, again, I’m studying what the professors tell me to study.
This summer I’m taking a break. And I’m going to pick back up that old project. This summer, I’m going to study God’s grace. I have a stack of books and a list of scriptures. It’s going to be great.
Hebrews 12:15 says “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God.” The standard definition of grace is that it’s something given that we did not earn. If grace is a free gift, how can someone fall short of it? And yet I do every day. Could there be more to that definition? It’s far too easy just to rattle off a simple definition and move on with life. We could leave it there. But my curious mind won’t stop. We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). We are swimming in God’s grace and yet still striving to find a set of rules to live by. I know I’m not the only one. Galatians talks a lot about that.
Stay tuned. This summer as the world reorients itself to a post(hopefully)-covid existence, we’re going to study God’s grace together.