“But grace has no borders.”

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 43). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

We are in the middle of a Presidential election and we are hearing a lot about closing our borders to illegal immigrants. I understand the concerns and even the fears that people have. One candidate is even talking about building a wall, a high wall around the borders of our country. But I am so glad that grace has no borders, aren’t you?

Brant says, “But grace has no borders. Love breaks through, and— just as Jesus said of the church— the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Yes, the world is broken, and selfishness is our default setting. But that’s all the more reason we get goose bumps when there’s a ray of light, and we can suddenly see the kingdom from here, where things are set right.”

He goes on, “Yes, we all deal with crazy people. Judgmental people. People who believe, deep down, that their job, after being invited into the party that is the kingdom of God, is to keep others out of the party, and then pat themselves on the back for ‘taking a stand.’” Facebook is full of people like that.

He then says, “When we recognize our unsurprising fallenness and keep our eyes joyfully open for the glorious exceptions, we’re much less offendable. Why? Because that’s the thing about gratitude and anger: they can’t coexist. It’s one or the other. One drains the very life from you. The other fills your life with wonder. Choose wisely.”

We who are true followers of Christ are called to a different way. Brant said earlier, “Recognize our brokenness, and then gaze at the beauty of God’s manifested love and grace breaking into the world. It happened two thousand years ago, when wise men traveled thousands of miles, and you know what they did: they knelt before it in awe. That’s because grace is amazing. For now, grace is the exception, and it’s a beautiful one.”

Does the grace you give have borders?

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