Cookie Grace

Colossians 1:6... The gospel is bearing fruit and growing through out the whole world - just as it has among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace.

I continue to be quickened to a faint whispering of the Fruit of the Spirit. You know, the Fruit every Sunday school student colors pictures of and memorized songs of. The passage in Galatians that every Jr. High youth kid is encouraged to memorize. And church going adults refer to in-between gasps of expressed disappointment in themselves.

Not too long ago I heard a message about fruit only coming from trees with roots. That fruit is a result of a healthy tree with a healthy root system. That the fruit are symptoms of the state of the tree... Good or bad.

Then somewhere along any conversation revolved around the FOTS, someone always refers to the fig tree that Jesus cursed. What's that about? We speculate it's something to do with bearing bad fruit, or not bearing fruit. Or maybe Jesus just had a thing against figs. Or it was just a parable... Or maybe.... Or maybe....

What I find most compelling and less referred to is the part in Colossians where it says that "the gospel bears fruit just as it has among you as soon as you understood true grace."

Now we could dissect the exegesis in this passage but even short of that scholarship, it's apparent that the gospel is bearing fruit in the recipients of this letter as soon as they learned about true grace. Fruit came from them after they encountered true grace.

Fascinating little study of a cute little passage. But what's that got to do with anything?

It certainly stands out to me just in that the writer doesn't just call it "grace," but "true grace." As though a distinction must be made. As though there is less than true grace. As though less than true grace doesn't actually allow the gospel to bear global fruit. Interesting.

As I reflect on my life, I'm not so sure I've ever born fruit because, let's face it, I can hardly accept or give basic grace, none-the-less true grace. I'm not even sure what that means.

People know me as sweet and nice and all sorts of things that are not always true of my motives. In reality, I'm over come by a lack of grace for myself. Which only leaves a lack of grace to share. I judge others as I judge myself... It's only fair. And it's awful! It truly is. If people only knew the times I think to myself that they just need to get over it and get it together. If people only knew the times I told myself that.

But apparently no fruit comes from that. So, here I sit, again. A mess. And it seems just right this time. If I'm to accomplish this TRUE grace thing and produce some fruit, I'd better get over myself get some grace up in her'!

Or maybe that's not the point.

Oh, I'm so bad at this.

Maybe that's where I should start.

I used to call it cookie grace. It was my form of potty training for the graceless. I was so bad at offering myself grace that I would intentionally do bad thing so I could sit in the imperfection and deal with it. Weird. Stay with me.

The history of Cookie Grace goes like this: at 20 years old, 5'6" and 110lbs, I was very much a vegetarian that didn't buy Jamba Juice because it came in styrophome. I felt guilty every time I'd take a vacation because I thought my time, money and fossil fuels could be better spent. I made sure to not sleep in because I felt that would be irresponsible with my time, and I'd eventually have to face some punishment for such things. I sat on every justice comity, half because my heart authentically burns for justice, and half because I believed I'd be condemned if I didn't. I labeled myself a Freegane because Shane Claiborne and I both agreed that people are starving around the world, so I'll buy sustainable vegan food and I'll eat whatever is free (or maybe that was just what it took to be a vegetarian on a college budget). And the list of guilt based low carbon footprint living goes on.

I have since recovered, but I now believe that I also struggled with athletics anorexia... Where I always ate my 2,000 calories, but I was constantly training for a marathon, so I burned more than I ate. I felt bad eating more because people were, once again, starving.

Aside from the above eating and socially motivated ideologies, I banned sugars from my diet. Why not?

So, here I sat (or ran), a long, skinny, bag of bones.

So eating cookies didn't happen often. First of all, the sugar was probably GMO, which is bad. The chocolate chips were probably not fair trade and were shipped from far away, which is bad. And the carbs didn't add value to my nutritional make up, which is bad. So why would I waste my time (which is also bad)?

And this cookie grace began. Though I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

In general, I tried to reduce my carbon footprint in all ways possible. I was calculated with my finances. I tried to keep my schedule perfectly set out. I tried to calculate everything and not hurt anyone. Buddah would be proud... Aside from the stress.

If I ever fell off of my perfect band wagon, catastrophe would hit and instant turmoil would overcome me. One Jamba Juice would throw me into a fit of anxiety. Seriously, I needed a sozo.

I knew I was far from where God created me to be. So I decided that when things were going "perfect" I'd buy a cookie to throw it all off. Just for kicks and giggles.

In hind sight, I was young. Let's just say that. But there is something to be said about Cookie Grace. I mean, what if I didn't have to be perfect all of the time?! Or what if I didn't have to be perfect ever? Or what if my best isn't perfect any ways (that's a shocker!!) Or, even better, what if perfect wasn't even a daily concern?.

Cookie Grace is far from True Grace, let me tell you. Honestly, it's quite redo lupus. But it came out of an acknowledgement that I was missing something. That there was some type of grace that I wasn't walking in, and that not walking in that grace was worse than reducing my negative impact on all of the starving children in Africa. I'm not sure I really believe that in my heart, but now I know it in my mind. Grace is important. After all, it's by grace that we are saved.

By grace we are saved. So, inversely, we are not saved unless we experience grace.

This gives me a vision of a bunch of type A personalities hanging out in Hell while the type B's sit in Heaven. That's horrible hermeneutics, but it's so contrary to what I've been trained to believe that the imagery has some value for me.

By grace we are saved. Bearing fruit to the world comes after accepting True Grace.

So, what does that look like? What does that mean?

I've tried to force grace on myself. It looked messy. I need grace for my broken efforts.

I tried to not accept grace, which lead my to anti-depressants and house of counseling.

So here I sit. And this time I'm going to stop trying. I am going to choose to be messy. I am going to let Father God encounter me in new ways, that my story may be re-written. I'm going to let Him journey with me on this lesson of grace. Maybe that's what True Grace looks like.

Maybe not.

But I do know this, I've never before been in a place like this. A place where it's ok to care about justice and sustainability and to also drink a Jamba Juice every now and again. And, at the same time, it's also ok to choose to not drive somewhere for vacation because I don't want to emit the gas fumes.

A place where God can share His heart with me with out me freaking out. A place where I can see the brokenness of the world and then look inside and see how broken I am. A place where I can trust that it's not my responsibility to fight brokenness, while at the same time being bold enough to stand for wholeness. A place where I can hear the rhythms of the supernatural with in the natural while, at the same time, missing many of those rhythms. A place where I can trust God to be God. A place where I can partner with the Omnipresent and sin at the same time. Not because I choose to do whatever I want, but because that's the beautiful dance found between Creator and creation.