Choose Grace

Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty
In everything

Grace finds goodness
In everything 

Grace by U2

     Now that the mounds of snow have mostly melted, I am overjoyed to see the snow drop and tips of daffodils peeked out of the garden beds, pushing up from under the leafy debris.  But also uncovered is refuse, garbage: at the side of the highways; blown up against fences; fluttering in the trees, and piled by the rivers.  My eyes are glad for the rest from the unending winter blanket of white, but at least the snow covered up the obvious wastefulness of our human race, consumed with constant desire for consumption and temporary material joy.  

   
     My part in the cycle of purchasing unnecessary items is fluid.  Today I can choose to buy plastic eggs or colored grass or a stuffed animal which will eventually end up in the mountain of animals in the corner of my children's room.  Or I can choose to recycle the materials I already have laying around my house, repurposing them for a new use, or I can plant a seed as a gift to my children, or bake the special Easter bread a friend taught be how to braid, or dye our eggs with onion skins and herbs.  I can choose to bring beauty into the world without also damaging it.  I can teach my children how to walk gently on the earth.  

     I can also make the choice to accept God's grace and mercy, given to me as a gift in spite of my human errors.  And when I accept that grace and mercy, I cannot help but be transformed at my very core.  And when I am transformed, I cannot help but choose life-giving activities, loving gestures of my gratitude for God's gift.  I am a like a cup which receives God's blessing and cannot contain that blessing and so it runs out again, giving life into the world, "and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,[a] who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)