A story of grace

I am part of our church’s Prison Worship Team. Approximately once/month, we hold worship services at Lancaster County Prison. Last evening we led three 35-minutes worship services, and because of the season of Easter, our theme was grace. My part of the worship services was the following story.

In 2011 my family and I had lived in the City of Lancaster for eight years.  Because I am pastor at Faith Church in nearby Conestoga Valley, we felt it would make sense to live in the same community and school district as the church.  So we put our city row home up for sale and started looking for houses in CV.  Eventually we found a house in CV, but our house in the city did not sell.  We decided to rent out the city house. 

To convert the property to rental status, we applied for a rental license with the city. A few weeks later, we got a letter in the mail from the city.  “You owe the City of Lancaster $17,000”. I was shocked.  There had to be a mistake. As I read the letter, I realized there was a mistake, but it wasn’t any of the information in the letter. We truly did owe the city $17,000.

Why did I owe the city that much money?  A few years prior, because my wife and I had young children, we qualified for a city program to remediate lead-based paint throughout the house, which primarily meant replacement of all windows and doors. We also qualified for a city program which would facilitate numerous repairs to bring our home up to code.  Some of the work was done through grants, which we did not have to pay back, but about $25,000 was financed through a home loan from the city, at 0% interest. It is a wonderful program that improved our home significantly.

For years we worked on paying off the loan month to month. I thought that the only stipulation on the loan was that we had to live in the home for one year, and then we could rent it, sell it, etc.  I was wrong.  The city loan agreement stated that if we were no longer the primary resident of the home, meaning if we rented it out, then we had broken the terms of the loan and would have to pay the balance immediately.  That’s exactly what we had done, and now the city was coming to collect the $17,000 we owed on the loan. 

We didn’t have $17,000.  We certainly could have applied for a bank loan, but a bank loan would not be 0% interest.  I decided to write a letter to the city asking for grace.  I explained the situation, and asked if I could just keep paying the mortgage off monthly, as I had been for years.  I sent off the letter, and my wife and I started praying.  I thought the city would respond in one of two ways. Either they would deny our request, or they would require us to start paying interest on the loan.

A few weeks later we got a response.  They did not chose either of the options I expected. The city approved our request, and they gave us grace.  It would have been within their legal right to require us to pay the money, even to take us to court.  We were the ones who broke the terms of the lease.  But the city didn’t sue us.  Instead they gave us grace and let us keep paying off the loan month by month at 0% interest.

Three weeks later, I got another letter in the mail from the city.  This new letter stated, “You owe the city $17,000, and you must pay immediately.”  What?  Did they change their mind?  Did they get rid of their grace?  As I read the new letter, I discovered what happened. 

When our new renters started a water and sewer account with the city, that alerted a different city department that we had broken the terms of the mortgage.  Clearly whomever had originally given us grace had not fully communicated that decision to everyone in the city government.  So what would happen now?  Would that original decision be overturned?  I was very concerned that Department B could overturn Department A’s decision, thus requiring us to pay the balance of the loan.

I decided to write another letter, asking for grace again.  A few weeks later the city response arrived, and it was grace again.  We could keep paying monthly at 0%.  We would not have to come up with $17,000.

If city government employees can be so gracious, how much more is God gracious to us!

Photo by Ryan Mercier on Unsplash