In my public library we have a rule that gives senior members of the library three days grace to
return their books on time. Then I started to wonder, where does the term
“three days grace” or “grace days” come from? After searching through a few
phrase and idiom dictionaries and finding nothing, I resorted to the Internet.
Typing in “Three Days Grace” proved to be useless as it only brought up
millions of hits about the Ontario-based band of the same name. Searching for
“grace days,” however, proved to provide better results.
An online legal dictionary
defines the phrase as “An
extension of the time originally scheduled for the performance of an act, such
as payment for a debt, granted merely as a gratuitous favor by the person to
whom the performance is owed.” The article also makes reference to this act as an old
English practice in the justice system, when a person was given an extra three
days to appear in court without fines or punishment. Today the term is generally
attributed to the commercial scene where people are given an extra few days to
pay their bills.
Professors
of a more lenient nature sometimes allow their students a grace period for
handing in assignment to avoid a zero.
In 2001,
Napster was given a three days grace period to remove unauthorized songs from
their system.
In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Jean Valjean requests three days grace in order to fetch Fantine's daughter.
The term also appears in a historical context. Apparently
Felix of Thibiuca, one of the first Christian martyrs during Diocletian’s
reign, was given three days grace to decide that the commandments of man were
more important than the commandments of God. He ultimately refused to agree to
this concept and was thus condemned to death.
Overall, these days of grace reflect, on a human level,
the unmerited mercy that God gives to us! (Though perhaps not so much in Felix
of Thibiuca’s case). I, for one, am grateful that God’s grace is not limited to
only three days or to one chance. Give thanks for a gracious and loving God!
