What's grace?  In its purest form, grace is something undeserved, something freely given apart from the recipient’s standing, ability, or merit, something the recipient didn’t expect or deserve to receive.  Consider Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.  Although Valjean stole some silver from the priest with whom he had spent a night--and the priest knew that he had--the priest allowed him to leave without retribution.  He gave Valjean grace to go on.

     Grace confutes reality, for it falls upon the good and evil, the bad and the good, seemingly undoing normative patterns of justice and what is fair. Yet grace cannot be any other way:  it must be free and unencumbered by social and cultural nuance.  To this end, grace, pervades the universe, pervades every nook and cranny, penetrates every dimension of our lives, every part of the cosmos. It's the operative principle of existence. Without grace, existence would not be; in fact, nothing would be. Without grace, there is no meaning, nor is there any explanation.
     Without grace, our universe is an accident--as are we.
     But isn’t grace only fully real if the person granting it has some degree of power over the one to whom he gives it?  Grace's richest sense connotes dependency, a dependency on objects or beings greater than oneself.  Yet grace could not come from an object, for an object has no way to give it.  Grace must come from personality, a personality in whom is vested thought, intelligence, power, and emotion, personality in which communication is active and working.  Grace is truly grace when it comes from a personality that is more powerful than as well as inexorably and favorably inclined toward the recipient.
     Genuine grace must come from a presence and power centered beyond this world, yet a presence and power invested in this world as well. It must come from a personality greater than the present moment, a personality that is able to overpower and guide present and past and future.
     Genuine grace must come from God.  As the seminal fount and source of grace, God is its final and ultimate dispenser, the beginning and end of all favor that can possibly be.  In God, grace is the foundation of the cosmos, the essential and continual outpouring of divine blessing upon every part of the creation.
     Grace is the beginning of love for every human being.