I recently wrote about the challenge of dealing with God's grace.  To those who preach a so-called prosperity gospel, of course, it is no challenge:  God earnestly desires to bless you materially and vocationally.  Grace, however, is more complicated than this.  To wit, why isn't everyone who believes in God, however she conceives him, wealthy?
     God's grace is that the world is more than a set of random events, that the universe has genuine meaning, that we are valuable and important, and that life is bigger than our experience of it.  God's grace is that regardless of what we may think about ourselves, our lives, or God, he loves us, anyway.  We may not want it, we may not like it, we may not understand it, yet we are foolish not to accept it.  When all else fails, God and his grace remain.
     In this, God's grace stands before us all, grounding and pervading the universe.  It speaks to us every moment of our lives.  But we have to listen to hear it.  We need to live with an open mind and heart.  In God's grace, the biggest questions of existence, that is, who we are, where we came from, why we do bad things, and where we are going after this life, have been answered.  God's grace means that the cosmos has purpose.  It doesn't mean that we all will be millionaires, nor does it mean that we all will be poor. God's grace is that when we trust God for his presence, he responds, collapsing the mundane and unpacking the real significance of existence:  Jesus as God in the flesh.
     As the psalmist said, "Your [God] lovingkindness is better than life."