This past Sunday at Vox Veniae, Gideon Tsang shared about where we get our name, Voice of Grace. He talked about how Grace means to receive something you don’t deserve.
Sunday afternoon I was handed a box containing a small electonic device that had been shipped to me. It was a gift, from a person or group of people I may not ever fully identify. I had jokingly asked for it on Twitter, and here it was. Immediately, I felt an immense weight on me, something had been given which I would never be able to repay.
The feeling is reminscent of guilt. You know something is wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Unlike guilt, there is no shame. You don’t feel bad, but you could easily begin to weep about it. It’s like the beauty of an overwhelming sunset or watching a baby laugh. It is amazing, but very, very heavy.
It seems to me that Gideon’s point is that the church is to live with the weight of grace constantly on us. We didn’t ask for birth or breath. We didn’t ask to be affluent Americans. We didn’t ask for Jesus.
This, to me, is the great apolegetic. Religion and science can constantly strive to explain where we came from and how stuff works. But they don’t explain why any of it is here in in the first place.
Life is, at it’s core, undeniably undeserved.
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