Grace, Grass, and Gumption
by J. Ellsworth Kalas
Well over fifty years ago, I was privileged for two successive autumns to bless my congregation in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with threeday missions led by E. Stanley Jones. He was in his early seventies at the time, vigorous and energetic, in his squareset Welsh frame. It was popularly reported that he did a substantial number of pushups every morning; I don’t remember the number, which is just as well because the figure I heard may have been apocryphal.
People often asked the secret of his good health. He explained one evening that the secret was in three G’s: Grace, Grass, and Gumption. The “grass” was a natural diet supplement. He didn’t elaborate on the list, but he noted with a wry smile that people often asked where they could buy the grass, but that no one ever inquired about getting grace or gumption.
(Let me confess, for the record, that I asked for the address where one could buy the grass supplement; let me also report, that I have long since lost the address, so I can’t give you that information; and if you have it, you needn’t send it to me.)
Grace and Gumption are another matter, however. They’ve been around a long while. So has grass, of course, and grass has been good for cattle and horses, and also for King Nebuchadnezzar when he “ate grass like the cattle” until his “reason returned.” But on the whole, it’s hard to beat grace and gumption.
Grace, as you know, is a gift from God. It comes without our deserving. We think of it primarily in connection with our salvation, but it’s a way of life. We never grow out of our need for it. Just when we feel most secure, we meet a bump in the road and discover we need grace as badly as we did on the night when we first wept for salvation. Five minutes after Simon Peter was on the mountain top of approval (“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you”) he was rebuked as a messenger of Satan (“Get thee behind me”). We never cease needing grace.
Gumption is often our human follow up to grace. After we’ve confessed that we’ve messed up and that we’re not all we thought we were, our next sentence must be, “But I’m not going to stay here moping. By God’s grace I’m going to get up and go again.” There’s a time to admit our failure and a time to kick failure in the chops.
I don’t recall Dr. Jones expounding on gumption, but he lived it. When he was in his eighties he suffered a massive stroke that seemed to surely mean the end of his life. When his daughter flew to his hospital bedside, he told her in what was left of his voice that he couldn’t die yet because he had to complete one more book. Against all odds, he did. He even returned to his beloved India to further preaching and teaching, where he died. That was gumption. God’s grace sustained him, and gumption held him to his vision.
I’m for eating right and for exercise (though I don‘t do enough), and I’m sure there’s some place for vitamins and such. But believe me, they can’t take the place of grace and gumption. And you don’t need an address to order them.
Ellsworth, I smiled all the way through this priceless essay. A gem.
Shalom, Don
Dr. Kalas: I look forward to your monthly contribution to the seminary alumni. I used the one on “Watching the Gate of Your Soul” in a sermon recently. Thank you and I thank the Lord that he sent you on your pilgrimage to what some call the Holy City, Wilmore, KY. My father found my mother there in 1925 so its not only Holy, its indispensable (to me)! Jim