Understanding what grace means requires our going back to an old  Hebrew term that meant “to bend, to stoop.” By and by, it came to include  the idea of “condescending favor.”

If you have traveled to London, you have perhaps seen royalty. If so,  you may have noticed sophistication, aloofness, distance. On occasion,  royalty in England will make the news because someone in the ranks of  nobility will stop, kneel down, and touch or bless a commoner. That is  grace. There is nothing in the commoner that deserves being noticed ortouched or blessed by the royal family. But because of grace in the heart  of the royal person, there is the desire at that moment to pause, to stoop,  to touch, even to bless.

The late pastor and Bible scholar Donald Barnhouse perhaps said it  best: “Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection;   love that stoops is grace.”” — The Grace Awakening: Believing in Grace is One Thing.  Living it is Another. (Charles R. Swindoll)

 

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