“Grace” like “Faith” can be a difficult word for understand. When you look up the definition of the word, you come up with “simple elegance or refinement of movement,” as the first definition. Even the second definition is only “courteous goodwill”. Only in looking at subsequent definitions do you find something more like the theological use with “the free and unmerited favor of God.”
It is easy for us to let “grace” simply become a theological term like “omnipresent” or “substitutionary atonement,” words that have great meaning, but that are often difficult for us to explain in plain language. And yet, maybe those three definitions above help us out.
First and foremost, grace is always the free and unmerited (even ill-merited) favor of God. God shows us grace so that we can know what it looks like in the same way that a child knows what a smile means from seeing her mother smile.
Secondly, God’s grace should give way to an attitude in us of “courteous goodwill,” that is shown to our neighbors. This goodwill is the grace that we reflect to our neighbors and friends.
Lastly, this means that a life of grace is a life of “simple elegance and refinement of movement”. As we encounter God’s unmerited favor for us and as we share that same unmerited favor with the people around us, we begin to move through the world with a simple elegance.
As University Lutheran, we are a “Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace,” and the grace that we have been given should show up not only in the theology that we know, but in the courteous goodwill and simple elegance that befits a people who have been shown the unmerited favor of God.