"Aha!"

 1/22/16                     Jerry                                         27

Grace. It's a familiar word. But what does it mean? What makes it so amazing?

There was one "aha!" moment in an hour long conversation with Jerry, a religious skeptic, and it had to do with the answer to this question.

We first reached out to Jerry as he was sitting reading from Plato's Republic. When he heard that I had a question about his beliefs he welcomed the chance to share his thoughts. After 20 minutes or so he was more willing to let it be a two-way conversation and was willing to hear a biblical perspective.

Jerry has read much of the Bible and when I asked what he liked about it he mentioned grace as one thing that really catches his attention. But when I asked him what he thought the word "grace" meant he really couldn't say.

So what does it mean? Jerry really wanted to know. I told him that it really needs some context, and asked for a little time to explain. I started in Genesis in the Garden of Eden, explaining our fall into rebellion against God. Because God is good and loves justice we deserve to be punished, because we too have the knowledge of good and evil and continue to sin like Adam. But because God is good and also loves us, He took the punishment for us. It is an undeserved gift.

At this point, Jerry actually said "aha!". I had to explain the bad news for the good news of grace to make sense. It was a small step maybe, but an important realization for Jerry and a real joy for me to be able to help explain it to him.