How do we deal with God's goodness and grace?  One of the Jesus' most well known parables, the story of the Prodigal Son, explores this question in a most poignant way.  As Luke 15 presents it, the story begins when the younger of a father's two sons asks his father for his half of the family estate.  After receiving it, he leaves home and, traveling to a distant land, soon blows everything on "riotous" living.  As a famine subsequently sweeps across that land, he finds himself destitute and broke, and decides to return home.
     As he approaches his family's estate, fully intent on apologizing to his father and hoping that he will take him back, his father sees him from afar.  Before the son can say a word, his father runs to him, embraces him, calls out to all who was there that his lost son has returned, and orders a vast celebration.
     Meanwhile, the other son, who has been working in the field, hears the noise of the festivities.  When he learns why the celebration is happening, he rushes to his father and tells him, "I have worked all these years and you never have done such a thing for me. Now your other son, the one who has squandered half your wealth, returns, and you hold the biggest party we have ever seen!  Why have I been so good?"
     "My son," his father assures him, "one day, all that I have will be yours.  But now, your brother who has been lost, your brother who has not done good, has returned.  My lost son has been found!"
     If we are like the older brother and try to do everything right to please God, we miss grace's point.  On the other hand, if we are like the younger brother and do nothing right, miss the point, too.  We find dealing with God's grace difficult because we cannot imagine how whether we do everything right or whether we do nothing right we still end up in the same place:  apart from God.  God's grace is a matter of faith, what we believe, and not what we do.  God's grace only comes alive for us when we realize that it is a gift, a gift that, for us, is absolutely and totally free.  There are no strings, there is no catch. All we need do is believe it.