Fall From Grace

Our modern society has become desensitized to almost everything. It is practically impossible to shock us anymore. We witness extreme violence every night on the evening news. Lewd sexuality runs rampant across our social media platforms, exposing our youngest generations to perversions beyond their wildest imaginations. Our starlets, athletes, and politicians have every second of their lives broadcast, unedited for all the world to see. It is no wonder we have become impossible to shock anymore. So what does this have to do with grace? Michael Pollan wrote a book called "The Botany of Desire", in it he

discusses briefly the origins of the word 'sweet' and how its meaning has changed over time. There was an age when to be called sweet would have been the best of compliments because the things of life that were truly sweet were quite rare. But in today's modern age, with artificial sweeteners, candies, refined sugars, syrups, and myriad other sweet things, the word has lost its lustre. Due to a gross overuse, a saturation with no distinction, the word sweet and its accompanying compliment have been reduced to the mundane. Along with sex and violence and lies and hypocrisy, we have become so accustomed to sweet things that none of these strike any kind of chord in us anymore. We have become desensitized to virtually every aspect of the world around us. Now with the age of artificial intelligence looming on the horizon, it is not hard to imagine how quickly the novelty of that world will wear off, leaving us craving more from an imperfect intelligence, designed solely to fulfill our cravings for some sort of feeling since we can no longer enjoy the simple things life offers us.

So too is the story of grace, and today's "wimpy" grace as Max Lucado calls it. For

generations now we have been saturated with images of models walking gracefully down the catwalk. Dinner after dinner we have mindlessly 'said grace', simple repetitions without ever stopping to think about what it truly means to grace a meal before we eat it. In medieval times kings and queens referred to as 'your grace' to imply respect and fealty to someone considered honorable and noble and respectable. But the years have not been kind to grace, just as they have not been kind to sweet. And due to grace's nature; quiet, humble, not pushy nor demanding, we have let the importance of grace slip away from the word, once again allowing ourselves to become accustomed to that which we should not. Though I can attest, grace has not become diluted, only in our feeble, fickle minds do we consider a grace as second-class blessing. In truth, grace is alive and well and just as is the truth of grace, she waits patiently for us to see the error of our ways and return to seek that grace from which we have willingly fallen so far.