grace

Every human is beautiful.

Isn’t that a wonderful thought? No matter what gender, nationality, physical, mental or emotional disability, every single human being is a beautiful and marvelous creation. I wish we all believed that. This world would look dramatically different if we did.

The sad fact, though, is that the world will never buy into that idea. There will always be models on the front of the magazines and celebrities will always be the well-spoken and good-looking ones. Our culture is much too superficial and immoral to ever see a person’s true worth. But what about the Church? Is there a chance that the Church could really believe and act like that? Like every human is beautiful? It could happen and it should happen!

That little phrase sums up what Holy Seed Community Church means by “grace.” Grace is an enormous topic with thousands of little nuances. It’s really hard to define, but really easy to see. It’s really hard to dispense, but really amazing to receive. Many of us have heard grace described as “God giving us what we don’t deserve.” I think this is a fair description. Usually it’s contrasted with “mercy” defined as “God not giving us what we do deserve.” Again, that’s a helpful way to look at it. But I believe grace is even bigger and broader than that.

We’ve come up with a few buzz words that might help people understand what we’re getting at when we talk about grace. These words describe the kind of community and environment we want to create and then nurture.

• Forgiving—we want to be known for canceling the debts people owe us.


• Accepting—we want everyone to feel right at home among us.


• Beautiful—we want people to understand that God adores them exactly the way they are.


• Blessing—We want people to leave our company better than when they arrived.

Those are really lofty goals. Realistically we cannot hope to offer this kind of grace to anyone. However, we believe in miracles. We believe that when we make the effort, God meets us half way. We believe the Lord literally places grace within us so that we can then give it to the world. Is it hard? Absolutely! Do we fail sometimes? You bet! Will we keep trying? Without a doubt!

God has given us so much grace it’s impossible to even calculate. Grace is everywhere at all times. It goes before us to protect and guide. It follows us to forgive and comfort. It surrounds us to stimulate and strengthen. We have all been literally saturated with grace. It’s very much like that breath of oxygen you just took. You didn’t have to concentrate on taking it. You just took it. It’s similar to the protective skin that covers every inch of our fragile bodies or the brain that processes thousands of thoughts every second or the fingers that can actually type out a new blog. We can do nothing apart from God’s grace.

What would happen if we were more aware of God’s grace? How would life be different? Could we even count how many blessings are in our lives? How many praises would we need to utter in a single day? It’s not just about the gigantic blessings of a wife, little boy, friends, a home, etc. It’s also about the tiny things like veins that know to only bring blood to the heart and arteries that only carry it away to the rest of the body. Grace. It’s about the tears that have that perfect chemical composition that our poor scientists still can’t perfectly match. Grace. It’s about the planet under our feet that spins at just the right speed and just so happens to be at the perfect distance from the sun so that we don’t freeze nor do we burst into flames. Grace.

If we’ve been given so much grace, how could we not give it away to others in return? How dare we hoard it all to ourselves?! Holy Seed will be a place of grace. We will be a community through whom grace flows easily and quickly. By the grace of God, we will be a people of grace. Because every human is beautiful.