Sure, we live in a world that needs grace, a world that needs to understand and experience forgiveness.

But sometimes we forgive ourselves too easily. We allow ourselves to lax into a state of indiscipline in our spirituality and an inconsideration for the wellbeing of our neighbour, simply because we don’t feel like we are in the right form on a particular day or during a particular season.

And then we very conveniently dispense forgiveness to ourselves, thinking that it is all right to be like that every now and then, and that God understands. We think that after all, we’ve already grown so much and done so much of this and that for God and for others, what’s wrong with failing sometimes.

The reality of falling once in a while is true and understandable. We are human after all. But the attitude with which we treat ourselves after having fallen is undesirable if we do not resolve to learn from each failure, to be better and to be more consistently loving.

Cheap grace is demeaning to the cause of the Kingdom. It’s not so much an issue of perfection as it is an issue of the habit of the heart.

Lord, have mercy on me. On us.