It didn’t take me long after waking up in tremendous pain one Friday to realize what was wrong; after all, it wasn’t the first time. Since I was young, I was used to having bad teeth. My sisters would have no cavities and I would have two or three each visit. We ate the same foods, mostly at the same times even, we brushed and flossed, but that didn’t seem to help me. So it was as a 40ish woman that almost all my teeth had fillings, several were capped, and there were a few root canals. This was going to be one of those; only the pain of an abscessed root could be this nasty.
I tried downing some Tylenol 3’s and they were barely touching the pain. There weren’t too many of those left either, so I called my dentist, who knew me well enough to trust this was a real problem, so I could get in and he could write me a script. Alas, he was not there but had gone away for the weekend leaving the name of a dentist across the county. Even if I wanted to try him, there was no way I was in shape to drive that far. So, I walked to a dentist office not far from where I live hoping someone could help.
Of course, most dentists won’t take emergencies for someone else’s patient, and this dentist wasn’t any different, but I pleaded my case vigorously. I told them my mouth history and that I knew what the problem was, and eventually the dentist took a look. Though she couldn’t see anything physically, she took x-rays and I left with a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers. I will be forever grateful to that dentist for the favour, kindness and compassion she showed me that day. (A few days later my dentist was back and sure enough, another root canal was performed!)
Fast forward to last night and I heard about extending grace to other people in life, whether they are Christians or not. The Bible speaks a lot about showing kindness, mercy, forgiveness, love and such, but I hadn’t really considered giving grace, only receiving it from God. So I decided to start by reading the definition in Webster’s 1828 version:
Grace (noun)- 1. favor, goodwill, kindness, disposition to oblige another
10. favor, mercy, pardon (given without concern for remuneration and whether or not deserved!)
All the definitions in between were about God’s grace to us. Then I looked up scriptures:
For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. Lk. (Greek word for grace is translated here as thank)
Let no corrupt word out of your mouth go forth, but what is good unto the needful building up, that it may give grace to the hearers; Eph. 4:29
All but these two scriptures seemed to be speaking about God’s grace to us, and I didn’t find these two scriptures very helpful, so I went back to a simple question. What would Jesus do? Would He extend grace to others? No human has ever shown such favour, goodwill, kindness, and forgiveness to other people as Jesus did. The scripture in Luke says if you only love those who love you back, what grace do you have? We should give love without concern for payback or whether or not they deserved it… it is the same with the other traits.
Certainly, we should imitate the character of Jesus Christ since He did say, “…follow me” (Mt. ) meaning ‘to be in the same way with’, and Paul says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1Cor. 11:1 ISV). Jesus displayed grace (all the above qualities) to the people He was around. That’s good enough for me to decide I should consciously extend grace to others. And don’t forget, as Jesus hung on the cross in pain, blood dripping down His bruised and battered body He did not consider His mistreatment and the undeserving guilt of all who rejected Him when He uttered those life giving and life altering words, “Father, forgive them…” (Lk. 23;34)
We didn’t deserve His grace, but He gave it anyway.
Thank You precious Lord for Your grace toward us.