His Grace

I love, love, love junior high aged girls.  I think they are amazing.  Their minds are a bit adult-like, in the sense that they are able to reason, be logical, debate, yet they are still childlike enough to ask really interesting questions that in a few years they would never dare ask for fear of it being "stupid".  I just love them (wouldn't want to be in Jr. High again myself, but I love them!).

I was talking to a group of them not too long ago about who-knows-what originally.  I'm sure we had spaghetti'ed off topic several times.  But we landed on the question of "being good".  Specifically is being good, good enough.  I posed the direct question to the group, "why do we try to be 'good'?"  One girl answered very quickly, without hesitation, "to go to Heaven, of course."

So I asked, "is that how we get into Heaven?  By being 'good'?  We earn our way in?"

She responded, "well, yeah."  (meaning - duh, lady, are you stupid?) "you do more good stuff than bad stuff."

*heart hurting, aching*

Why the cross then, why the cross?  If we can get 'in' all by ourselves, just suck it up and get 'er done, then why the cross?

My heart hurts that this girl, a girl who has grown up in Christian churches in Switzerland and the United States and in a Christian family doesn't know about grace.  amazing grace.  Has no one told her about the grace of Jesus, the purpose of the cross? How many more are there who don't know about grace?  Who are trying to do this on their own, to 'earn' their way in by being 'good'.  

I think this verse says it best...  

⁸For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (^[a]delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God...Ephesians 2:8 (The Amplified Bible)