Awhile back, I had a meeting with a man struggling with issues from his past.

He’d been involved in some things as a young man that continued to haunt him into adulthood. He was pretty sure he’d never shake the darkness of yesteryear.

It so happens that I had prayed especially hard before our meeting that God would have me say things I wouldn’t normally say.

And so I heard an answer to that prayer come out of my mouth.

“You’re trapped in karma,” I said. “You’ve forgotten that grace is way more powerful than karma ever could be.”

He sat up. It turns out that subconsciously he HAD assumed that the universe would demand an exact payment for his misdeeds of days gone by.

Then I played the pastoral trump card, at least in this case: “It’s like that U2 song says, ‘grace . . . she travels outside of karma.'”

Turns out the man is a huge U2 fan. He’d just forgotten the truth of the song.

We prayed that he would be drenched in grace that day. And so he was. His parting words: “darkness has been lifted today.”

That’s what grace does.

Here’s the song.