Grace

So what are we going to say? Should we continue sinning so grace will multiply? Absolutely not! All of us died to sin. How can we still live in it? Or don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life. If we were united together in a death like his, we will also be united together in a resurrection like his. This is what we know: the person that we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore, because a person who has died has been freed from sin’s power. But if we died with Christ, we have faith that we will also live with him. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has power over him. He died to sin once and for all with his death, but he lives for God with his life. In the same way, you also should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:1-11, CEB)

We have received grace. I have a tattoo of a statement of a pastor friend of mine who told his story of how he used to cut himself in front of 30,000 of his closest friends at an ELCA Youth Gathering. His phrase is, “There’s Grace for That.” I have this on my right forearm, with other tattoos about suicide. Because there is grace for that.

But knowing there is grace for that does not mean we continue doing things that we know are wrong or harmful, and yet sometimes our own minds convince us we need to do them. We do not do wrong or harm to get grace; grace is there to help us move beyond the harm and live in the reality that our demons lie to us and our own minds can play tricks on us.

We are all enough as we are, and God’s grace is enough for all of us.

You are enough.

And no matter who you are or what you do, there’s Grace for that!