I was deeply ashamed. I knew better and had done something foolish anyway. I pondered the consequences, sure that I’d reached the limit of God’s grace in my life.
Illustration by Jeff Gregory
Though it may have looked as if I was included in a recent round of layoffs, the truth was I’d been let go because of my response to a coworker’s email. She’d sent a farewell note to a group of leaders in the organization, letting them know that her job was being eliminated and how much she’d enjoyed her time at the company.
After months of dealing with increasingly toxic institutional politics and an impossible workload, I had already begun to plan my own exit. I didn’t look at the recipient list of those to whom my coworker sent her gracious goodbye email, assuming she’d only sent it to me. In the most unfiltered and unprofessional manner possible, I poured out my heart to her—expressing my growing frustration with my job and the workplace in general—and hit send without double-checking.
My email went out to everyone who’d received my coworker’s message—about 20 people.
First thing the next morning, I was summoned to HR and fired on the spot. While I’d hoped to leave the job, I didn’t want to leave like this.
Where could I go from here? It felt as though I’d permanently disqualified myself from the career track I’d been pursuing. I knew that when an interviewer would ask why I left the job, I’d struggle to find the right words to explain what happened.
A couple of weeks after I was let go, I got an unexpected phone call from the head of a ministry with whom I'd done some volunteer work. “I heard through the grapevine you left your last job,” Bill said. “And I'm looking for someone with your skill set for a new role we’re creating.”
I liked Bill a lot and didn't want him to find out the true story from someone else. “Bill,” I said with a knot of dread in my stomach, “I didn't leave under the best circumstances. I need to tell you about that before we continue this conversation.”
He didn't miss a beat. “No, you don’t. I know you and what you can do, and that's all I need to know.”
I didn’t realize it until that moment, but grace had always been an abstract concept to me. Despite my love for the stories of God’s repeated rescue and redemption of sinful people who had chosen to stray far from Him. Despite the fact that I knew well the Sunday School definition of grace, which turned the word into an acronym: “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” Despite my intellectual belief that grace was a gift and couldn’t be earned.
But that phone call—and the job that followed—helped me experience God’s grace tangibly. I discovered it isn’t meted out by the teaspoon until the container is empty. It doesn’t come with an expiration date. It is the expression of His patient, perfect, infinite love—lavish in the best way possible.
I'm not the first person to need a living, breathing encounter with grace to make it real. Consider Peter’s story. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, we see Peter as a devoted follower who sometimes stumbled over himself, like when he rebuked Jesus for predicting His death (Mark 8:31-33) or volunteered to build tabernacles for Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36).
We empathize with his certainty that he’d never deny Jesus, only to do so three times (Matt. 26:31-35; Matt. 26:69-75). Even after this, we find the disciple hopeful at the tomb the morning of the resurrection and restored to ministry afterward (John 20:1-10; John 21:1-19). And the early chapters of Acts show the best side of a Peter—a man who has been renewed by grace, his understanding of it now far beyond anything he could have imagined.
But despite that incredible foundation, Peter still didn’t always get it right. In Galatians 2:11-21, Paul describes his fellow disciple’s hypocrisy in trying to gain the approval of the Jewish leaders by refusing to eat with Gentiles. Even at that point in his life and ministry, Peter was still tempted by fear and a desire to please men rather than God. The clear description of the conflict suggests that Peter accepted Paul’s firm and gracious rebuke, though the text doesn’t explicitly say so.
It was a lesson Peter needed to relearn at a later moment in his life. God continued to give him grace, using Paul to show there was always a place at God’s table for Peter, just as there was for Jewish and Gentile believers to freely eat and fellowship together. The Lord makes room for each of us—no matter how we’ve messed up.
Four years after I took the position Bill offered me, he was preparing to move to another state. At his goodbye dinner, I pulled him aside and asked, “Can I tell you the whole story now?” He laughed and shook his head—not in disbelief, but in the easy way of someone who’d already decided the story didn’t matter. Then he hugged me.
Standing there in his embrace, I thought about all the years I’d spent treating grace like a limited resource—something to be rationed, something that would run out if I went to the well one too many times. Bill’s response said otherwise. I hadn’t earned my place at that table. I hadn’t worked my way back to it. It had simply been offered, the way grace always is: quietly, without fanfare, and long before I thought to ask.
