Image by Deniz Tortum via Flickr“We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion.
Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.”
National Geographic, June 2011, Gobekli Tepe
This discovery reminds me of an account in Genesis chapter 11 about a people that traveled east and came to a plain in the land of Shinar. Humankind has a desire to get close to God yet we find a gulf between us and God. Temples and acts of worship were tried to bridge the gap but the message was always simple, take a path to love God completely (Deut 6:5, Luke 10:27). Easy say but hard to live, but God has us covered with something called grace.
What is grace? For many in the Christian world it means “unmerited favor”. Was this the concept that the translators were attempting to convey or was that a conclusion we have drawn? Grace is the root of several English words such as graceful, gracious, disgrace and others. In this week’s presentation, we looked at words that have grace as a root to seek a common thread as to what the root word conveys.
What we found was that grace is actually broader than just “unmerited favor”. With both gracious and graceful, there is a perspective of the receiver and the giver. The graceful dancer or the gracious host has a talent or ability, which is or has become part of their nature. Those privileged to watch the dancer or be served by the host witness the warmth, beauty, and generosity that they provide. The nature of what they do works to build us up and make us feel better. In a similar way, God whose nature is grace, takes us and makes us beautiful in his eyes, so much, so that we can even come into his presence. Our God who is full of grace overcomes the impossibility of us attaining that on our own.
Since the Greek word charis is not a root of grace, next week we will delve into it to see what concepts the writers were attempting to convey. Hopefully it will be a similar concept to what we have seen with grace.
For those that would like to view my presentation it is available at:
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