My wife Libby, who teaches math at a public school, received an email from one of her students this morning. The student gave a long list of excuses of why he couldn’t get his homework completed on time. Each one of the excuses were completely valid and easily verifiable if my wife wanted to. After reading through the email, Libby announced to me that she had accepted these excuses and had no problem giving the kid a few more days to complete the assignment. Then she added a further comment to explain how she came to her decision: “because he is such a good student and never gives me any problems.”

Now, I realize that it is quite a step to take this little story and dive into a discussion on God’s saving grace, but it was a quick reminder to me this morning that God’s grace is so absolutely amazing that it is so hard for us to truly grasp and even harder to show a lesser form of it in our own lives. People seem to hand out grace only when it is deserved or somehow merited. But is this really grace? Imagine if the only reason God chose to save us was “because we are so good and never give Him any problems”? Who could stand before Him?

This lesser form of grace comes up daily in our lives though. We drive down the road and someone cuts in front of us and we get upset. Maybe they didn’t see us in their blind-spot. We hand out gifts to our friends and loved ones at Christmas time and typically receive a gift right back from them. Would we still hand them out if we knew this equal exchange wouldn’t take place? We all in some way believe that grace is something that is earned but God says that He demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. How can we show others today what grace truly is?