Christianity didn’t make sense. I remember standing in front of a church pastor with my fist gripped in my pocket, wanting to smash his face. He was sitting in a chair, smiling at me, saying that God’s ‘grace’ through Jesus had achieved all that I need – I could sit on a chair as he was doing, sit in that grace.

“Just receive it”… but it didn’t make sense. Surely there was something I still needed to do? A religious ritual or similar? How could it be that easy? I was confused and angry but the pastor had no more to say. That was the ‘gospel’. A gift.

It wasn’t long after, on another day, that I finally made a decision to accept that gift of love by my creator. Of course, it wasn’t so ‘easy’ for Jesus Christ. It involved a great deal of suffering and death. Perhaps you’re someone who thinks of Christians and religious types as weird. People that lean on the crutch of faith. People that believe in magic. People that believe events 2,000 years ago matter now, which is crazy. But there was nothing magic or unreal about the cross of Jesus Christ. It happened.

Blood, pain, weeping, death… and then an empty tomb. An event so ‘weird’ that it turned life upside down for many Jewish people living in Israel in the First Century, alongside others inhabiting the Mediterranean coast. An event so traumatic that the Roman Empire was later brought to its knees – and even the emperor himself bowed to Jesus Christ.

Grace: God’s riches at Christ’s expense.