The Flowering of Grace

The words were angry, tight and cold. We spat out syllables designed to wound, expose, pronounce, condemn.

And then we crouch behind dark curtains, grieving for the pain we’ve caused; the lack of laughter where we live; the friendships stalled or even broken. We cannot see a way back home, and time drags wearily toward night.

But there is light and warmth—and grace—for us. The Bible says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). We reconcile when we restart the conversation pain has paused: we choose to move beyond this dry impasse into the ease and laughter we once knew. Because of grace, our friendly options flower like deserts do from nighttime rain.

The miracles of grace first happen to us and then through us. Because we are embraced by God, we learn the language that rebuilds: “I’m asking your forgiveness. I want us to be friends again.”

And somewhere God, who never pauses or desists, is smiling as we practice grace. The love that saves us makes us kind.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Getting What We Don't Deserve

We want the verdict we can’t have—to be both right and righteous; to win each argument on points, and yet be counted blameless.

But something in our quest to win undoes our fleeting grip on grace. “Love is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs,” (1 Cor 13: 5) the Bible says—and still we keep a tally sheet of wounds we’re waiting to avenge. We chase a kite tail in the wind to fix what gossip has besmirched, convinced that what we call the “truth” is ultimately more prized than love.

But only God can get it right. Only a wise and gracious Father can be both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).

“He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,
and by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

The goodness of the gospel is not getting what we’ve earned. For there is One who took our lies, our lust, our longing to be right and washed them with His tears and blood. As grace replaces all our fantasies of justice for ourselves, we yield to the greater truth: “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

It is enough if only Christ is right, and through His grace declares us whole.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Manna in Our Wilderness

We breakfast on the crusts of aging self-help theories. “Believe, believe in who you are,” we mutter as we face another thin and hungry dawn.

By lunch, we are negotiating losses, trying hard to still believe that “We are wise, and we are warm, and we are kind.” But conflicts with our colleagues and chasing three-year-olds around a house belie the bromides and bravura.

At supper, we go searching for our comfort food, the self-indulgent set-aside of all that didn’t work that day. “No one could have expected more of me than me,” we chant. Our sins were only foolish calories—not consequential, easy to explain.

There is, no doubt, a better way. The gospel taught by Jesus doesn’t ask us to think better of ourselves or imagine qualities that never have appeared. “God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,” (Rom 5:8) the Bible says. “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).

Grace builds our confidence in everything God gives. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again” (Jn 6:35).

This is the manna for each day—“not I, but Christ.”

Trust what He gives. And stay in grace.

Assumed Identity

The storyline is so familiar now. A kindly grandfather in some quiet town is found to be a gangster living under an assumed identity. A civic leader loses her elected role when her history is revealed behind a different name. We shake the dust off polished shoes in not-so-righteous indignation, for we prize honesty, we say.

And yet, we know this story well. Before we learned to count or read, the orbit of our life was willful, proud, and self-involved. To these we added faults we chose—the cruelties of school playgrounds; the teenaged gossip that cut worse than any knife; the damage done our bodies and our minds through substances and time ill-spent. Our failures ran much faster than our years.

And then, one day, the Father offered us a new and strange identity: forgiven sinner; healed outcast; prodigal brought home. He wouldn’t let us take a lesser role, but righteously insisted we accept our place as sons and daughters deeply loved.

So now we live with this assumed identity, and struggle with the Father’s robe we feel ineligible to wear. He is relentlessly insistent on this new life He’s given us: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean” (Acts 10:15).

To feel unworthy never means that we are unforgiven. Grace is the way we’re learning how to live within the Father’s house, enjoy His love, and welcome other prodigals back home.

Put on the awkward robe of grace. And stay in it.

—Bill Knott

Why Grace Makes Us Uncomfortable

We’re no good at accepting gifts when we can offer nothing in return.

And so we wrestle for the restaurant bill, determined not to be obliged for what someone who loves us wants to pay. We writhe in proud embarrassment when gifted with a sum so large we fear we’ll lose our freedom to decide, to regulate, to choose. 

We’re willing to be thankful so long as there’s no lingering commitment: we’ve traded Christmas cards and dinners. Our scores must all be evened, and all accounts be balanced.

And then the Father overwhelms us with impossibly good news—a flood of undeserved and unrequited kindness for which there’s not a payment plan: “In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us” (Eph 1:7).

There’s no way we can work if off: there’s no amount of painful, legal rectitude that ever can resolve our debt. God’s grace confronts us with a gift so great that we at last give up on ever evening the score. We learn to live as loved and liberated souls, and one day even revel in “the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:7).

Receive the gift from God’s great heart. And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Reassuring Rhythms

When do we offer reassuring words?  Whenever there is fear, perplexity or pain.  Our words rebuild the vital bridge connecting pain to hope, to peace, to continuity.

“Don’t worry, little one,” we soothe.  “Daddy’s going to be right here until you go to sleep.”

“You’ll be just fine,” we tell the anxious student on the night before the test.  “You’ve studied hard: you know this stuff.”

“You’re not alone,” we whisper to a saddened soul who cannot see beyond the terrible calamity of now.

In these, we faintly echo all the Father’s reassurances. He both anticipates our fear and moves to heal it with deep promises of connectedness and peace.  In one short psalm, we hear the same phrase 26 amazing times:  “His steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 136:1). The rhythm of His reassurance rolls through history, time, and all our fears until the message of sustaining grace becomes embedded in our souls:  “His steadfast love endures forever.”

The arms that hold us in our grief are here:  “His steadfast love endures forever.”  When we are lonely, we recall:  “His steadfast love endures forever.”  When conflicts, large and small, besiege our lives, and we can hardly summon hope—“His steadfast love endures forever.”

Grace is the story of God’s endless and unbroken love.  At every turn; in every hurt; when joy arrives; when hope renews—“His steadfast love endures forever.”

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Reclaiming Our Identity

“Who do you think you are?” the bully thundered, and we shrank back into some smaller self that could more easily escape or hide.

“Who do you think you are?” the college entrance essay asked, and we explained we were the product of suburban schools, or immigrants, or persons trying on new cultures. “I am a daughter; an orphan; a member of a racially exploited group.”

“Who do you think you are?” the counselor gently queried us, and we described our brokenness, our loss of self, our pain, to someone whom we paid to listen to our stories.

“Who do you think you are?” the Father asks. And how He smiles when we respond with joy and laughter shining in our eyes—“I am the prodigal come home. I am a son, a daughter of Your love. I am the one You never take your eyes off—even when I played the rogue, or spent Your wealth, or claimed I never knew You.”

“I am the child You pledge to always love. And even when I get it wrong, I feel Your grace, Your kindness, Your forgiveness.”

“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom 5:8-9).

You cannot earn the Father’s love. You cannot lose the Father’s love.

So stay in grace.

Love That Won't Let Go

When dreams of bright success have stumbled on the hard edge of reality . . . When every scheme for fame or followers has left the needle where it was . . . When all the crowd who live for now have gone on dancing down the boulevard—just then we learn the value of the love that won’t let go.

It’s father in the driveway saying softly as we pack, “You can come home again.” A colleague asks us on the elevator ride, “Are you OK? When would you like to talk?” A high school friend calls from a time zone far away to say, “I pray for you each day. What do you need just now?”

We learn the ceaseless grace of God from people still receiving grace. Their patience—their persistence—through the twists of all our wandering gives substance to the truth we read in Scripture: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end” (Lam 3:22). From heart to heart and hand to hand, we practice love that rescues us.

And one day soon, we will be saying to some other soul—“What do you need just now?” “When would you like to talk?” “You can come home again.” 

The grace we share is grace we’ve learned. The kindness never stops with us.

So stay in grace.

Renewal in the Ruins

At every rounding of the year, we realize how much we need renewal.

On New Year’s Eve, we want to slam the door on the departing year, or banish memories of 2020’s pain and grief. But there are—and must be—great ties between the old year and the new.

We live in the same bodies: we inhabit the same homes. We remain related to the same family: we work at the same jobs. We worship with the same believers: we study the same Word.

It’s renewal, then, and not a clean break from the past, that offers us our greatest hope in 2021. How can our bodies be renewed? Will this year be the one when we’re transformed by the renewing of our minds? (Rom 12:2). How does a weary marriage find new sources of resilience and of laughter? Can dry and broken friendships be restored? We crave the ageless source of all renewal—the grace and mercy of our Lord revealed in the pages of His Word. 

Yes, grace renews what grace began.

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” (2 Cor 4:16-17).

 So here’s to growing deeper, stronger, wiser, kinder in 2021.

Stay in grace.

Love Came Down

This painful year has made us clear on what we want for Christmas. Though Lexus and Mercedes-Benz are sure we want a gleaming ride with giant ribbons on the roof, we have no miles we want to drive. The ads all tease us with dark fantasies on Amazon or Netflix, but we still have our darkness to get through. The tech toys that we bought for sport have only one compelling use this year.

We want each other more than gifts. We want the long and lingering embrace of two-year olds who won’t let go; the bear hug from a distant friend; the real gatherings of real folk around a tree, a table, or a fire. We want the laughter never muted, carols sung by families on nights no longer silent. We want the deep security we find in holding, playing, eating with the ones we love in places we call home.

So Christ came down because He couldn’t bear the breach of space; the distance numbered in light-years; the loving words half-understood. He came to us in helplessness so we might know He needed love—our love, the warmth for which He fashioned us. He laid aside His rulership so that a two-year old could grip Him tight; a mother’s tears could turn to joy, and bitter, broken men could heal. He came to make the lepers dance; to be the face the blind first saw; to hear the deaf sing harmony.

His joy is us: we are the only gift He wants.

Accept the grip of His embrace. And stay in grace.

Keep on Singing

Electric icicles are draped from eaves that never have seen snow. Inflatables, some 10 feet tall, loom high above synthetic reindeer, grazing on front lawns. Mythical figures never known in Bethlehem crowd close to dash away whatever pain may linger in the story. Back-lit Nativity scenes help us believe that everything that night was just as festive, clean, and comfortable as all the stuff by which we annually remember it.

But it was painful to be Joseph—much harder still to be Mary—when none were welcoming and no inn had a room. The irony was palpable and blunt: “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him,” the Gospel says (Jn 1:11). Royal lineage did not protect Him. Creatorship gave Him no sweet advantages. The wealthy and the powerful were threatened, not elated, by His birth. All that the principalities and powers could do was summoned to make His entry random, painful, and forgettable.

But heaven had—and heaven has—a beautiful and gracious plan. For every time we sing a carol, or read the story, or tell a child, we push the darkness back a bit. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness” (Jn 8:12). The grace He gives, the life He beckons us to live, “is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Prov 4:18).

Keep singing now: the light will grow. Decide to tell the story.

Saving Our Stories

The story brims with contrasts and disparities, and yet we tell it year by year.

We meet an emperor, and then, at last, a baby.  We hear of wealth, taxation, and deep poverty.  We marvel at the gap between an iron power and abject, fragile weakness. 

The One who roamed the far-flung galaxies created by His word lies helpless in a trough from which farm animals are fed.

Brilliant, iridescent angels terrify poor shepherds, who abandon pregnant ewes to gather ‘round the only Lamb who could deliver them.  

Unlearned and voiceless laborers at the bottom of the ladder are tasked with sharing the first good news the world had heard in centuries.

And for all this, the story is ever new and never finished.  We know this story—we tell this story—because it is, somehow, the tale of our lives.  We know the clash of expectations and realities; of hopes held high and lives lived low; of failures, weakness, joy and pain.

And so this birth is like every other birth, and like none that ever has occurred. “What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (Jn 1:4).

Grace came to live with us—to change the ending of our stories. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Grace on the Ground

The soloist soars high above the massive, harmonizing choir: “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining.”  But on that night,  no soul on earth expected anything but normal.

We drape the story of His birth with yards of gauze and billowy bright angels.  We estimate a gentleness His weary parents never knew.

We decorate the landscape of our Christmas with smiling sheep and camels trudging from the East.  And we forget how hard it is to live beside—among—farm animals in fields or in stables.

We ring a halo ‘round a birth that felt—that hurt—like any other birth, for there was nothing to relieve His mother’s pain except, perhaps, the wise words of a midwife and the prayers of worried Joseph.

Truth is, the grace of God, the Word made Flesh, took pains to enter all our commonness, our struggle and our dirt, so all who live below the line would see Him as their Saviour, too.

Grace never was afraid of dirt—not then, not now, not ever—whether in a musty stable or in a haggard heart.  Our pain, our sin, our guilt, our shame—these are the things He gladly wore as surely as those swaddling clothes.  He was, He is, Immanuel—God with us; God one of us; God for us.

So come, let us adore Him.

And stay in grace.

Full of Grace and Truth

“If you would tell me, tell me true,” a wise old man once said. “There isn’t time enough for lies.”

And when we’ve polished all our trophies, and sung again our victory songs, we come at last to stories too painful to be false. Each honest story unwraps our wounds, our hurts—as well as those we’ve given.

We grieve the loved ones whom we’ve lost—a spouse; a friend; a much-loved child—though some of them still live and breathe. We mourn the loss of innocence; we’ve soaked up toxic sums of greed. We laugh at violence and war; we cheer for “heroes” who display our poorest human qualities. We feel the sadness for what’s never fixed or mended or repaired.

And so it’s not an accident that we know more of Jesus as a healer than any other role. He stepped into the broken story of our world with grace that made the lepers dance and unlocked tongues that never spoke. He gave the parents back lost children; He cast out evil spirits and refashioned sin-sick attitudes. He told us of a Father who kindly waits for us to finish playing prodigal.

And when He died to heal us of our greatest hurt, He took our pain and made it His. “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed” (Isa 53:5-6).

The good news is that grace still heals. It closes wounds; it soothes our scars. And someday soon, it leads us home.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

The Choice to Love

“She was very gracious in accepting my apology,” we say with heartfelt admiration.

“He gave a very gracious speech in light of the circumstances,” we add, aware he could have done differently.

Our common references to grace reveal we most always link it to “something that didn’t have to be done that way,” or someone who made a noble choice to rise above the normal human lust for power, wealth, or influence. Grace is always a choice, even in difficult, vexing moments.

And there we find a useful definition of God’s gracious acts toward us: they are always somethings He was never obligated to do. It was—it is—a choice, a principled, character-driven, even painful decision to offer us His love and His forgiveness. Even when we spat on His Son, and beat Him badly, and laughed at His extremity, and mocked Him as He died.

If God were not gracious, all who have ever lived would be doomed. “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). 

But grace is real; forgiveness happens, and broken lives are made brand-new. In every hour—on every day—the Father offers the mercy we will neither merit nor deserve. And all for the deep satisfaction He receives of seeing us embraced and welcomed into the kingdom of His Son.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

The Great Unlearning

We crouch behind our walls and fences, readying ourselves for what we’ve learned to fear. We lock all doors, secure the bars. We mentally rehearse our steps, our routes.

We twitch at unfamiliar sounds, lie wide awake when branches scrape the roof, and wait for light and morning.

Whoever is not us is “other”—a nameless, faceless “stranger” we assume means only harm. “They” are the people unlike us—of different race, perhaps; or language, habits, customs, faiths. We crave the time machine that takes us back to comfort as we knew it.

But grace is so remarkably persistent that even locks and fears cannot deter how it reshapes our thinking.

When you discover—at long last—that you were “other” to the Lord—that you were threatening to His kingdom, a rebel to His law and rule, and damaging the world with your hostility and hate. And still He loved—still welcomed you into His house, and gave you keys to all the property. He trusted you before you knew you could be trusted; offered you forgiveness—yes—for sins not yet repented of.

We were embraced before we even tried to love. “God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:18).

So grace remakes our way of seeing those we used to fear—takes down our walls brick after brick—until we learn that difference is a source of joy, that “other” can be “brother,” “sister” “neighbor,” “friend.”

The great unlearning has begun. Now stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

Beyond the Galaxy

If there’s a mountain anywhere to climb, we scale it.

If there’s a chasm some say can’t be spanned, we find a way to bridge it.

When we demand a new frontier, we harness all the ingenuity we have to launch deep probes of planets, moons and suns.

But there’s one goal we’ll never rise to conquer—how to reconcile a sinner to the Father.

Nothing in our repertoire responds to this persistent challenge. Effort will not make it happen; wisdom won’t achieve the goal. Diligence and ritual won’t bring the heavens closer.

Only from the heart of God could answers come that heal the world, atone for our disaster and disgrace, and offer us a future far beyond the galaxy. Only He who came from God to walk with us, and feel our pain, and mend our brokenness can do the hardest thing that ever was.  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).

Grace came down, and grace abides. And only grace will lead us home.

Rejoice in love’s magnificent reality. And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

The Best Kind of Graffiti

“John 3:16,” the hand-lettered poster reads, and we imagine some sharp zealot who bought a stadium endzone seat to get his message out to millions on TV.

“John 3:16,” the spattered license plate declares, as we idle in traffic and ponder why some driver would request those letters and those numbers for his car.

“John 3:16,” the understated business card asserts, as we turn over all the notes and papers of our day.

These characters—four letters and two numbers—spell out the code of grace. They stand for truths so grand and baffling that we need everyday reminders: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

God loves us unimaginably. God gave us Jesus unhesitatingly. God welcomes us unendingly.

Grace is the boldest, most audacious thing this broken world has ever heard—so startling we are stark amazed that it could possibly be true. It’s not the fate that we expected. It’s not the verdict we deserved.

But it’s the gift that God’s deep heart of love still offers us—on any day, in any place.

So paint it somewhere on the walls of your life. And stay in grace.

—Bill Knott

The Gift that Keeps On Giving

There’s nothing quite as satisfying—or as dangerous—as the certainty that we are right and someone else is wrong. We relish those rare moments of rightness because they wrap us in an unaccustomed virtue, as though we suddenly were several inches taller.

Should we be sharp in underlining their mistake, or should we play it cool—and let embarrassment be the bitter aftertaste for those who got it wrong? We toy with power as cats abuse their mice.

But there’s another, better way to be both right and righteous. “Above all, love each other deeply,” the Bible says, “because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). The grace that blotted out our sins—that made us whole—is grace available to give when others fail. In fact, we show our gratitude for grace by offering it to those who have no place to hide, who wither in the judgment of their peers.

Grace isn’t fully part of us until it is re-given. We learn much more of mercy when we’re merciful to those—like us—who don’t deserve forgiveness. “Freely you have received; freely give,” Jesus says (Matt 10:8). And in the giving, we discover our true size as sinners wrapped in grace.

Regift the grace that’s given you. And stay in it.

—Bill Knott

Winning Together

When we were kids, each walk became a race; each math assignment launched a competition; every recital was a place to prove our mastery. Half of us, on any day, were losers of some kind—in the race to the mailbox; in the quest to get the better grade; in the hope to have one shining moment when we were proclaimed the best.

And so we arrive at mid-life with a shelf half-full of trophies and an aching sense that we have lost more than some rounds of golf and afternoons of tennis.  We spend the first half of our lives turning friends into competitors, and spend the last half trying to reverse that process.  Winning may be everything, but everything on many days can feel remarkably like nothing.           

Grace offers us a different way—a way to run with others, not against them; a way to play for joy and not for triumph.  There are no losers in this race, except for those who will not enter.

The apostle Paul, as tough a man as ever walked the planet, reminded us how all may share the final victory:  “I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing.”

Grace crowds the finish line with millions of co-winners.  And the Lord, who judges everyone, is delighted with the outcome.

So stay in grace.

—Bill Knott