Grace and accountability

We have had a contractor at our house the last few days working on our chimney.  In the process of what he is fixing, he has managed to leave tools and debris all over our yard, damage our gutters and ruin a piece of brand new patio furniture on our deck.  My husband extends a lot of grace to people, but this one has irked him.  In addition to what we are paying our contractor, we are now going to have to buy a new chair and pay to fix our gutters.  After much thought and debate with me, he decided to deduct the cost of the chair from what we are paying him. It's not that I didn't agree that something needed to be done, but I was unsure what to do.  Where exactly is the line between forgiveness of a mistake and holding someone accountable?

I posed this question to David yesterday.  "What would you do if you were Daddy" I asked him. What surprised me were the questions he asked before he answered - how much are we paying the contractor, how much did the chairs cost, is Dad going to have to replace the gutters, how bad is the damage?  All these were thoughtful questions and I was proud of him.  But then I related it to what he is going through in 5th grade.  They work off the check system - you forget a book in your locker, you get a check mark.  You forget a paper at home, you get a check mark, etc.  All these checks are then reported to the parents at the end of the week.  "What if you forgot your Science book in your locker and the teacher decided to extend some grace and not give you a check?"  "Yeah right" was his answer.  "I wish" he said.  "But what if they did that and you continued to forget your Science book, day after day, disrupting the class and delaying the lesson?  Do you think you would ever learn to remember your book if you didn't pay a price" I asked.  "Probably not" he responded.

God did the same thing for us.  Jesus paid the ultimate price for our mistakes, but we have a responsibility to accept what he did, or not.

Back to the contractor situation.  My husband never ceases to amaze me in his optimism for people and their ability to change.  He truly wanted our contractor to learn from this mistake.  He told me that if the contractor is doing this here at our house, most likely he is doing this at every job and he is going to lose money.  He wanted him to get better, so he had a heart to heart with him after the job was done. He told him he was deducting the amount of the chair from the total, but gave him some constructive criticism to help him get better.  I was very proud of my husband, and the contractor was apologetic and took it very well.  Rick wants to give him more work, but wants him to get better so he can hire him again.

Grace, it's such a beautiful thing when used in a loving way.  So is accountability.  We can learn so much by practicing both.