Sunday, January 12, 2014

Improving Grace?

Sometimes I'll catch myself singing hymns without spending too much time actually thinking about the words. Today at church, we sang hymn 240, Know This, That Every Soul Is Free. As I got to verse 4, I noticed a phrase that struck me as a bit odd.

Our God is pleased when we improve
His grace and seek his perfect love.
What does it mean to improve the grace of God? I've always viewed God's grace as perfect.

I did a search in the scripture section of lds.org, where I typed the phrase "improve grace" into the search box. I didn't get any results.

The only thing I can think of is in the context of real estate. A piece of empty land is said to be "improved" when a structure is built on it. So maybe what the hymn means is that when we have God's grace in our life, we should do something with it.

That's all I've got. Any other thoughts on what it could mean?

1 comment:

Jessica said...

Pretty sure it means "enlarge upon"- in the sense that you try to see what God's Grace would cause to happen, then work to that same end. Or maybe they were just stretching to find a rhyme.