How is voting day like grace?
I was thinking this morning about our elections on Wednesday, and about how everybody gets a public holiday, even those who don’t vote. It seems so unfair! It would make more sense if we had to show our thumbs to HR on Thursday, and those who don’t have the mark of the beastly black pen get a day deducted from their annual leave stash. Even that would feel like a too-small smiting for those who commit the capital sin of not voting. But we all get a public holiday. Not because we voted, but SO THAT we can vote!
And then I realised that that is how grace works. Like the public holiday is given to everyone, even to those who do not earn it by queuing at the polls, so forgiveness is given too. Offered. Free. We don’t have to earn it with our effort, or our symbolic markings. God wants us to have it, we just have to take it. It is a free gift from God. Grace is given - undeserved favour - so we can share in the Kingdom of God. Not because of the life we live, but SO THAT we can live life!
Ephesians 2:7-10 MSG: “Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
We get to choose how to use this public holiday, and I hope that we choose to use it to cast our vote for a better life for us all. And we can choose how to use this grace, and I pray that we choose to use it to transform our lives for a better life for us all.
The price has been paid. The gift is on offer. The holiday has been declared. How will you cast your vote? What will you choose?
