Grace is free

I was on the treadmill when I remembered a scene from my 10th grade literature class. One of the students completed her quiz and asked (in that brown nosing kind of tone that only serves to make the teacher-student relationship less amicable) "what should I do", now that she was done with her quiz, and without warranting her even a quick glance my teacher responded, "sit quietly and contemplate your sins". So then I figured it would be an opportune time for me to run quietly (I am one of those hopelessly loud treadmill users) and contemplate my sins. But because the devil is so witty and cunning I quickly started thinking about popular culture's sins, which soon turned to the trampling at the Wal-Mart today, which soon turned to pondering what has become a complete commercialization of Christmas. But since God is more witty and more cunning than the devil he reminded me that grace is free!

And from that I realized that grace will get any human farther than something from Wal-Mart. I was about to say that Jesus being born was the best gift any man could receive but then I remembered another story from school. One of the first days of history class the teacher asked in his intellectual British accent what the most important historical event was and somebody said "the birth of Jesus". He commended them in his across-the-pond way of commending students and then asked what the second most important historical event was. Nobody raised their hand so I figured I'd start off the year strong and be the only one to answer, so I said "the death of Christ" and the whole class stared at the teacher, who was unjustly faced with the theological decision of which aspect of Christ's life was most important. Apparently the correct answer was much simpler: the agricultural revolution.

But remember that this Christmas season. If you don't have any money to buy somebody a gift, pray for God to give them grace! It's a big paradox: it is priceless and costs nothing! It's something so much better, so much cooler, so much awesomer than anything that can be wrapped up. And praying for somebody else helps you too. Sometimes when it snows my family wakes up early and my mom makes breakfast while the rest of us go shovel the neighbors driveways, and my dad used to always say that we were doing it because of the maxim do good things for others, but me and my sister always knew that 2 of the neighbors were going to pay us very handsomely, and if we tried to give it back they would have none of it. Praying for somebody is kind of the same way. You do it because it's really good to pray for other people, but in the back of your head you know that it will help you too.

That's how I know God exists: only somebody who created this world and continues to govern it could be the overarching theme to three completely unrelated stories about post-quiz time, history and shoveling.