Mowing the Grass

  So there I was...

  I was out mowing the weeds (there isn't much grass there) the other day when the mower suddenly cut out and started smelling like a burned-out motor.  (I have an electric mower.  Not a big fan of hauling the cord around, but I don't have to worry about gasoline or routine maintenance.)  I stared at it for a little while in hopes that it might fix itself, so I called Black & Decker to see what they had to say.  I thought they might have some helpful suggestions that might fix it.  Instead, since it's still under warranty, they told me they'd send a prepaid label so I could send it to the nearest authorized service center, which happens to be in Knoxville.

  So I have to mail my lawnmower to Knoxville.

  All this led to me borrowing my neighbor's lawnmower to finish mowing my half-mowed lawn.  It was really nice to not have to haul a cord around or worry about running over it.  The nicest thing, though, is that it was self-propelled.  All I had to do was pull a little lever and the mower would then haul itself up the hill rather than depending on my strength to push it up the hill.

  But I was so accustomed to not having such a feature that I kept forgetting to pull the handle, so I was manhandling this thing up a hill that it would have climbed on its own.  Not very bright, am I?

  How much time do we spend in our walk with Christ refusing to pull that lever, refusing to accept Christ's grace because we're determined to do it on our own or because we forget that it's there?  We live in a country that loves a 'can-do' attitude, that elevates the self-made man into a hero, and so we try and achieve the same thing in our faith--we believe that if we are good enough, if we pray hard enough, if we go to church enough, then we'll really be living the life that God has called us to live.

  But we're getting it backwards.  Christ's grace comes first--and we need to accept it.  We cannot achieve justification before God on our own efforts.  It is impossible.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  But we need not despair--through Christ we have access to grace undeserved, to love unbounded.  Through Christ we are justified, deemed worthy.

  Or we can stubbornly push forward with our own efforts.  At some point we will realize they are futile, that we'll never make it on our own strength, that accepting Christ's grace is the only way to be justified before God.  I suspect I'm not the only one that struggles with that.  It is my prayer that the American church, that each and every one of us, lets go of our efforts to earn God's love and instead lets the love of God wash over us, and that such a decision transforms each life into a model of Christ's selfless love.