Scandalous Grace

You never wanted it to be this way. Indeed, you spent hours making sure this would never happen. You thought you had planned for every contingency—bad weather, car trouble, sudden illness. What you had not planned for was that all of them would converge and completely derail your efforts to make your deadline.

After pulling an all-nighter, here you are—dressed in your most professional suit—waiting to submit the work you have been laboring on for months. The deadline passed two days ago; but you are hoping you can find a compelling way to plead your case. What do you have to say to convince the person who stands behind the counter to accept what you have to give?

Someone unlocks the door and you walk briskly across the room. You lay your package on the counter and begin to tell your story. You begin at the beginning—talking about when you first learned about the project and decided you wanted to participate. You recount your careful scheduling of the various parts of the assignment —detailing the way you made allowances for interruptions. You chronicle all your troubles—the hurricane, the busted alternator, the respiratory infection that became pneumonia.  You make sure to point out that all of these setbacks were predicaments over which you had no control.

Your adjudicator listens patiently. Once you finish, she reaches for the package, smiles and says, “Thank you! I’m sure there will be no problem.”

You turn to walk away surprised at how easy it was. Just before you get to the door some guy in dirty blue jeans and a worn out t-shirt stumbles into the office. You can tell he had a rough night, too; but not like yours. His bleary eyes and distinct aroma tell a different story.

As he slouches toward the counter, you notice that he has a package in his hand, too. It looks almost as rough and tattered as its owner. He plops it in the same spot where you had carefully placed yours, and slurs, “Well, here it is.” You wait to see what happens next.

The woman behind the counter reaches for the package, smiles and says, “Thank you! I’m sure there will be no problem.”

“No way,” you think. “Scandalous!”

Consider this: “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). Yes, God’s great love is scandalously good news.