xáris-Grace

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNClAJO2tnQ]I admit, I hear the word ‘grace’ and tend to think of a word over-used and hidden in ambiguity. I know it’s a word that has a deeper meaning than I can understand, a hidden mystery, if you will.  The beautiful part about a mystery is that there are clues to be unearthed, the prospect of gaining perspective of the truth. There is even a gift in the hunt. It hit me again today, a desire to hold the word and look at it up close.  I recognize that most of my life, the “looking at grace up-close moment” came with difficult circumstances. Is that why acknowledgement of our weakness is actually strength-because that’s where grace lives and breathes?

Grace is for the moments of honesty, when you realize that you not only DON’T “have it all together”, but you never did and never will.
Grace is for the moments of lost dreams.
Grace is for disappointments.
Grace is for depression, when there is no way to explain the sadness inside.
Grace is for failures. All of them.
Grace is for the drought.
Grace is for fatigue.
Grace is for sickness and weakness.
Grace is for the moment a love leaves this earth and and we don’t want to stay here.
Grace is for helplessness.
Grace is for the parent in need of wisdom.
Grace is for the honest soul begging God for light.
Grace is for the oppressed and enslaved.
Grace is for the broken.
Grace is a gift given to the humble living.
Knowing our need, we can breathe it like air, bathe in it like water, walk on it like the path leading home, hear it in every song, taste it like our favorite dessert, feel it like arms embraced in a hug. It’s that real for those on the hunt. I guess that’s why why see it closely in our darkest days. There’s no pretending we don’t need it.

xáris (another feminine noun from xar-, “favor, disposed to, inclined, favorable towards, leaning towards to share benefit”) – properly, grace. 5485 (xáris) is preeminently used of the Lord’s favor – freely extended to give Himself away to people (because He is “always leaning toward them”).
-from the Strong’s Greek