You've gotta hand it to 'em - they're certainly a robust species.

The trail runs up walls, over dirty dishes, into cupboards and strangely disappears.

If you prescribe to karma, a good drenching of surface spray would be out of the question. I mean, what if that exoskeletal critter (the one doing backstroke through my sugar bowl) is poor aunt What's-it who died a couple of years back?

If you scoop her up and deposit her on the footpath outside, you might be spared the same demise. But she clearly deserves her lot - past actions presumably affecting her incarnation. Karma bites.

At the nucleus of most world religions is the belief in karma.

Literally, karma means "action" or "deed" but in religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism it has come to represent a belief that our actions directly influence the cycle of cause and effect, that what we do has direct consequence on our quality of life now and in future lives.

"What goes around comes around."

Bono - that complex personality who melds stardom with philanthropy and philosophy - told French journalist Michka Assayas that, "karma is at the very heart of the universe".

"I'm absolutely sure of it," he said.

"And yet, along comes this idea called grace to upend all that "as you reap, so will you sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions."

Grace is unique to Christianity.

Most religions have a sense of good and evil, but - as C.S. Lewis once pointed out, Christianity is defined by grace.

I'm not talking about the short prayer before meals.

Grace is this: getting what we don't deserve.

Like the time you were caught speeding and the police officer let you off with a warning. That's grace.

Like God flinging wide the gates of heaven despite your dark past.

If acronyms work for you, try this definition:

God's

Riches

At

Christ's

Expense.

Romans 5:7-8 says, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Grace in a nutshell _ pure and wonderful.

In his book What's So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey said that "God's law is so perfect and absolute that no one can achieve righteousness."

If it was left at that, hope would be in short supply.

"Yet God's grace is so great that we do not have to," Yancey continues.

"By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behaviour. It is to know God."

Faith and religion are so often confused, thrown into the same raft.

I, for one, am sick of having the finger levelled at me for the countless misdemeanours of "Christian'' people - people driven by religion rather than faith.

Because faith is relationship, but religion is rules.

Faith embraces the gift of grace.

Religion strives to follow the rules, hoping good deeds will be rewarded in that karmic kind of way.

Another favourite Yancey quote: "You can't do anything to make God love you more, and you can't do anything to make God love you less."

God's not swayed by actions, he's interested in your heart.

Of course, it doesn't mean we throw caution to the wind and do anything we want without

consequence. But if you approach God with a genuine heart then he has the biggest gift you could ever hope for.

Grace or Karma?

Yours truly is too flawed not to accept that gift of grace.