reliant on relient k.

i have a tendency of zoning out while i drive. good music will do that to a person.

my sister sydney and i were in the car earlier today, and we literally went a good half hour without talking. we were singing along to the music on the radio, just taking in our surroundings.

when we got to the chorus of chris tomlin's Your Grace is Enough, i laughed when i realized that sydney and i were both methodically drumming along to the beat -- i on the steering wheel and she on the dashboard. in that moment we connected (as it is sometimes hard for siblings with ten years between them to do), and a conversation about grace ensued.

i shared with sydney how i had just recently come to really understand grace. it seems that the word is often times used interchangeably with other words such as mercy and love. she gave me her 14-year-old definition of grace, one that really could be categorized as either mercy or love.

i wanted so much to emphasize the importance of grace, to show her that really it is an attribute that is so set apart -- not greater than mercy or love, but different. as we talked, i struggled to find an example that she could relate to, something that would really make sense. after a few failed attempts, i shared with her a line from a relient k song, lyrics that had really made me think and finally understand the true meaning of grace.

from the song Be My Escape:
"the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair."

then, almost instantly she got it. and to be quite honest, in three years of teaching high school, this "light bulb experience" that i witnessed with sydney was greater than any i had in the classroom.

Romans 6:23
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

how awesome is the grace of our God who forgives our failures and overlooks our inadequacies. we deserve death, yet He in all of His grace and unfairness (thank you relient k) gives us life eternal.