Ooops, you missed the grace.......

The day of reckoning had arrived and this servant was in deep.  He owed so much money to the boss man that he could never, ever, ever pay it back.  Maybe if he won the lottery (if they had had a lottery back then) or possibly if a foreign government invaded the country and his boss was killed and so no one ever knew about the debt........but less than those two possibilities, he was in deep.

Yet he bowed low and begged for more time.  He made promises to pay it all back even though everyone in the room knew it wasn't going to ever happen.  He might make a small dent, but when you get in that deep, there is little anyone can do to mitigate the circumstances.

Except, forgive the debt......which his boss did.  Forgave the debt.  All of it.  Completely.

If you ever are in need of a definition of grace, there you have it.  Unexpected, undeserved, unimaginable, unprecedented forgiveness of a debt beyond the beyond.  Grace. No strings attached.  No promises extracted.  100% gift.

And he missed it.  Oh sure, this servant knew he was forgiven.  He knew a thousand pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders, he knew he had a chance to live his life in a completely new way.

Apparently, however, he didn't know that this kind of thing is grace, and deserves a moment of silent awe and a lifetime of thanksgiving. He didn't grasp that this was a golden opportunity to travel a different road as a different person.  Instead he left his boss' house and demanded repayment of a paltry sum from one of his fellow slaves.....tossing him into prison when he couldn't pay.

On any other day of the week we might have called this first servant a nasty SOB (seriously obtuse brother), but today, after the wonderful gift he had received from his boss, well, words completely escape us.  Grace poured out on him that day and he completely missed it....and we are left as confounded as we are sad.

We often miss grace.  We take forgiveness for granted.  We convince ourselves that somehow we deserved this unexpected gift that fell into our lives.  I think this happens because we don't know what to do with it all......we are confounded by the grace itself.

So here's my best advice.  The next time grace drops in, give thanks to the giver, give thanks to the Divine, and then turn and be gracious to someone else.

Grace is a gift that increases in value each time it is given away.