today i heard someone use the phrase “fall from grace” in regards to all the stuff going on in the life of the tiger woods family. i don’t really care to write anything about what has happened with tiger & elin woods. i do, however, want to talk about that phrase. “fall from grace” seems to imply that we are “in grace” when everything is going great and we are doing everything right. in the case of tiger woods he was apparently living “in grace” when he was a billion dollar athlete with all those corporations wanting to use his skills as a golfer to sell their products. then he apparently “fell from grace” when he lost all that? at least that they way i understood the use of the phrase.
seems like that is the way the phrase is usually used. its said when someone’s perfect life is destroyed by their own screw ups and the public is no longer in love with them. someone has an affair, gets caught doing something crooked, or giving into what they shouldn’t and they have suddenly “fallen from grace.”
except that’s not what grace is about. grace means receiving the very thing we do not deserve. we are in grace when we have been and are being forgiven of the very things we don’t deserve to be forgiven of. we have the opportunity of “falling into grace” right at the moment that we realize that we have really screwed up. i guess the way we really “fall out of grace” is by rejecting the forgiveness that is being offered to us. grace is not something that we “fall out of” when life is falling apart. instead, it is at those very screwed up moments that we actually have the opportunity to fall into the arms of grace.
i hope tiger (and all of us) “fall into grace” because grace always seems to have a way of lifting people back up.
So true. In our falling moments the very essence of grace is made real. Grace meets us, we don't meet grace. Grace is not necessarily equal to blessings. Tiger may have lost his stature but he has not disqualified himself from grace. Thats the point, all the failings in the world would only bring him closer to grace. Grace focuses on the undeserving target. In this moment Tiger is most qualified to receive grace. Not because of what he did but because of what he cannot do. Grace gives and we receive. That is the beauty of Christ's unconditional love. In our weakness His grace never ends.
I miss your sermons.