How I Get Around - Both Grace and Works

I noticed something strange the other day: travelling by foot and public transportation somehow felt more liberating than travelling by bike. When I bike, I can go wherever I want reasonably quickly. I'm not bound by any particular schedules or routes. I have complete freedom. Or do I?

When I bike, I also have to take care of my bike. I have to lock it up when I get somewhere and unlock it before I leave. And the act of travelling by bike takes energy; I often end up sweaty by the time I get anywhere. It's a lot of work.

Taking public transportation is easier. With public transportation, I can travel great distances by merely walking short distances and then sitting or standing for periods of time. The only difficult part is the timing, and a little forethought and insight can take care of that.

I think it's the forced downtime of public transportation that makes it more appealing. When riding public transportation, one has to sit and wait for a while for a bus or train to come or to get you to where you're going. It makes us experience moments of (probably much-needed) rest.

Also, I like the feeling of cleverness that comes with planning an efficient route. The schedules can be cumbersome and confusing, but figuring out an effective way to use the public transportation system can be as rewarding as solving any other puzzle, plus, it comes with the reward of getting you to where you want to be.

As I tried to think of an analogy that would make all of that blogworthy, I realised that the difference between these two modes of travel can highlight the differences between grace and works. Biking is like working. It takes effort and diligence, and it makes you sweat, but it is also liberating in that it provides a high level of self-reliance.

Taking public transit is more like grace, as it has you spend time waiting for something to carry you and just holding on to something while it does. It means that you're dependent on something other than yourself, but it lets you tap into a power greater than yourself as well.

It's something of a trade off. But thankfully, with a little bit of extra effort, I could have the blessings of both. It's possible (for some people) to carry a bike onto a lightrail train, and the buses in Sacramento have bike racks in the front. If I have both my bike and my transit pass with me, I could bike wherever I want and supplement my biking with riding public transit whenever the scheduling works out. I can have the benefits of both works and grace, if I pay the costs of both.

To get the benefit of biking, I still have to get on my bike and pedal, and to lug it around and lock it and unlock it, even when I'm not really using it. And to ride public transit, I have to study it out so I understand when and how I could use it. Similarly, tapping into grace takes a certain amount of scripture study and devotion, and work, naturally, takes a certain amount of work. You may prefer one method of Christianity over the other, but they each have their uses, and to make the most of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you need to use them both.

The gospel isn't all grace; God expects us to pull our own weight every now and again. But it's not all works, either, as God is willing to lends us a hand. We need to both put forth our own efforts and tap into God's grace, but as we work together with God, we can accomplish almost anything.