Written by Lily Kramer.
This summer, our intern group at Edify read Generous Justice by Timothy Keller, and one truth has stuck with me since. The Gospel didn’t wait for us to deserve it – it was given while we were still far from God, still failing, still unable to offer anything in return. That’s what makes it a gift and not a reward. A reward goes to people who’ve earned it. A gift goes to people who haven’t, and that’s the whole point. None of us started out deserving what we were given.
Partnership, Not Rescue
The Gospel truth reshapes how I think about Edify’s work. Edify walks alongside school proprietors not because they have something to give but because they are worthy of support and encouragement. Training, capital, and education technology are offered to these proprietors as a partnership, not a transaction, not a hand-out. Edify’s model is rooted in the same posture Jesus modeled on the cross. Nobody on either side of Edify’s partnership started out with everything they needed. We are all in need of grace, and we all have something to offer because of it.
This is part of what makes Edify’s approach to partnership different from a model built on rescue. School proprietors aren’t projects waiting to be fixed. They’re people already doing hard, faithful work, often with very little support, in places where the odds are stacked against them. Edify comes alongside them the way Christ comes alongside us. Not because they’ve proved themselves, but because we are called to walk in relationship built on grace instead of merit.
A Catalyst Close to Home
Watching that posture play out through my internship this summer became a catalyst for me. It’s one thing to read about grace but it’s another to watch an organization structure its actual work around it. Choosing partnership over pity and relationship over rescue in the small and big decisions.
This idea is no longer theoretical to me since I have seen it firsthand through Edify. It started to press on how I show up with the people around me, coworkers and friends alike. Grace isn’t a posture reserved for nonprofits working overseas. It’s available in every ordinary relationship, including the ones close to home that don’t come with a mission statement attached. That kind of love, offered before it’s earned, is available to all of us. We don’t have to wait for someone to prove they deserve our patience or our time. We can offer both the way they were first offered to us.
Keller, Timothy. Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. Penguin Books, 2010.
