Gracious love shows that inside old people, who may be bent and frail and broken down, there is still someone inside who is young and fresh and loving. I have experienced genuine, overwhelming, gracious love from people who are mentally handicapped, or even mentally ill. I have met street people and poor people, who understood gracious love better than rich Christians. Grace makes things that aren't quite right, perfect. Grace makes us into better people than we really are.
Gracious love transforms our world and our experience.
I said that I thought about two aspects of love, in preparing for this morning. One of them was the graciousness of love, and the other is the grittiness of love. By grittiness , I mean the qualities that give love a shape, and an edge. One of the most obvious examples of that shaping or edgefulness, is truth . Gritty love demands that we tell, and live, the truth.