I was in the car, frantically checking my phone as my friend drove us to school. The ACT scores were up. I saw the driveway, the garbage cans, as we pulled out. As we turned, a bright streak of sunrise snagged my eye.

Oh well, I thought. It’s great; I know it’s great, but I don’t have time for it now. I kept pressing at my phone, clicking and reloading because there wasn’t service. We were on Claflin now.

“Look at the sunrise,” my friend said.

“I know,” I said, wanting to convey that I wasn’t blind and could appreciate beauty. But I looked anyway.

The sky was swathed in shades I didn’t know existed; pinks and oranges and purples and a dark romantic blue mixed together and not creating brown. It was murky and wild and dangerous, somehow.

The street was laid out before the sky. There were blocky buildings, a few cars and a woman running with her dog and looking at the sidewalk. She turned the corner.

What a waste, I thought. What gross mismanagement. The sunrise is received by people on their way to work and people on their way to school and people running nowhere.

What perverse set of rules governs the universe?

Could it be grace, whatever that is? Maybe it’s the essence of this: a sunrise suspended over self-consumed, preoccupied zombies on their way to work. Unjustly generous treatment, like the smiles of your fourth grade teacher even though you failed the geography test.

I’m not writing this sloppy definition because I’m the master of grace, as anyone who knows me at all would agree. Rather, I’m writing this as part of a long effort to understand its essence. Why are there sunrises, especially in a world where other forces usually claim control?

I kind of disenjoy sunrises, to be honest. Grace is a nice idea, but let’s be real. Life is hard and grim-set and a sense of justice must prevail. It feels as if there’s no room for sunrises when you need to get to work or when you lose your job.

Sunrises, however, are pretty much how He works. He doesn’t operate based on the laws of fairness; instead, He showers people with benefits they didn’t do anything to earn. Case in point is me. I’m not sure how to expound on this, but I have a lot of issues. I live in the near-constant belief that I’m a forgotten victim. I wish I was kidding. But time and time again He proves that I’m not forgotten, that I have a future. That someone’s looking out for me.

I think the “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” approach sheds more light on this. For a little while I’ve been trying to figure it out, and at first I thought that the point of it is to not feel animosity toward hurtful people. But the sunrise philosophy moves beyond that. When you pray for someone, you actively change sides from victim to advocate. Instead of saying, “you’re mean but I won’t hold it against you” you say, “you’re mean- let me help you out.”

I guess you’re supposed to accept that you’re being lavished with sunrises when you’re in your car at 7:15 a.m., annoyed at life and thinking everyone else should be as grumpy as you.