Cooperating with Grace


I ran across the phrase “It’s how you cooperate with Grace” in a book entitled “The Orchards of Perseverance”. It was spoken by a monk, Brother Adam. As we all know we receive a personal invitation from Christ to enter Heaven. God also extends to us the grace to respond to that invitation. But it is not automatic. Most of us struggle from time to time with responding to that invitation. It really isn’t that much different from how we consider responding to invitations that we receive to parties or events in life. We start with: Am I Free? Which basically means is there anything that I might consider more important? What shall I wear? Which might indicate that I am looking for ways to cover up the real me and present not who I am but who I would like to be? “Do I have to bring a gift?” Or in other words to do I have to share some of my money or possessions.
Luckily for us, when God invites us, that grace that he also sends can help us respond to the invitation, eventually no questions asked. I have come to realize that God’s grace is there for me 24/7 every day of my life. The action then becomes how I cooperate with that grace”. For the invitation, I respond. For the Grace, I accept. Seems simple. Carrying on with yet another analogy. God’s grace can be accepted in the spirit of a “mother of the bride” and the invitation being one to a wedding. The mother of the bride freely accepts that grace and cooperates with that grace to devote her time and energies to doing the things that will insure that invitation will lead her and the rest of us to that festive life with Christ. Another great dimension of the wedding analogy is that it is an invitation is to a group from God not an individual. We can respond individually but in doing so we help the group to response.
One way to look at grace is as a combination of energy and conviction. Using that interpretation can surely be seen in our mother of the bride analogy.