Too Abundant to Handle?

A few days back my friend from Germany shared some things she's been learning about grace. She does a lot of humanitarian work and has pretty much given her life for the sake of others. Grace could be her middle name. Her confession, however, was that her grace could only reach a certain point. She talked about two friends who had both done terrible things she never thought they could do, and she had no idea how to approach them. The realization was that true grace, grace as it's meant to be, reaches unimaginable depths--almost too abundant to handle.

I listened with great interest to all of this. I've never been an overly legalistic or judgmental person. In fact, you could say I err in the opposite direction and sometimes favor my bleeding heart over principle when I shouldn't. But my friend made me think deeply about the whole subject of grace.

Lately I've read several articles about women in oppressive countries. A large number of women in one particular country actually light themselves on fire and try to commit suicide. They do this to escape abusive marriages that they (for the most part) were forced into. I burn with anger when I read stuff like this. Not only do I desire to see men like this severely punished...I would gladly do it myself. That's a pretty powerful feeling for someone who's largely against capital punishment (I'm sure I'll take some heat for that). Anyway, the point is that I know that my grace, like my friend's, also has limits. I have subconsciously drawn a line in my head and all grace stops there.

"It's scary to love without condition."

Indeed it is. There are certain situations where I wish grace did have conditions, but I only think that because I'm ignorant and completely blind to my own unworthiness, not to mention the power of real love. And less anyone think I want to set all the prisoners free I can assure you I do not. I stongly favor punishment, pre-emptive protection, and rehabilitation. People like the men from the articles I read should be stopped. They should bear the consequences of their actions. I want this to happen. But I don't want to hate them. It's hard for me to believe that God loves them as much as He loves me. It's too abundant for me to handle. Even so, I am thankful there is One who has no limits, who draws no lines, and who is capable of turning the most hopeless situation into something good and beautiful. Anyone who's ever lived in the third world knows that as impossible as this grace may seem to be... it is, in fact, exactly what we need.