Today's Grace

Grace is an amazing thing, and one that I am sure I do not understand. It is one of those concepts that is so much bigger than we are, we cannot wrap our heads around it. The wonderful part is that we don't have to. God told us, oh so long ago, that our thoughts would never be like His. That He is higher; so much higher.

What a glorious thought! To know that our God is all around us, Master of all. But He is here, and He communicates with me. That He desires me to communicate with Him. Awesome is the only word, but even that is not enough.

"God's riches at Christ's expense." The definition of grace that I learned as a child. But that child had absolutely no understanding of what it meant. As a grown up child, I have only begun to recognize it in action.

I want to describe how I have seen it in my own life, and that I am seeing it in the lives of many around me who are hurting. So many hurts. The terrible adversity that I see now is not new, but I am grown, so I am aware of more. (Why is it we wish so much to grow up?) I would like to adequately picture for you what God's grace is in our today's. I really can't do that.

No words of mine can convey the all-encompassing love of our Redeemer. No song could accurately display the gentle strength He lends us in our hours of deepest sorrow. It is all inadequate. We can't represent it clearly because we can only see through a dark glass.

I see Him, kneeling alone and praying. Moments before His torture began; torture that should have been mine. And He prayed for me. The well known painting is deeply imprinted in my mind as are His words.

"Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;" Jn.17:20

Even as a child, I knew that He thought of me when He said this. My face came before His face, and He knew me. He knows me still.

Grace. He was imparting it even as He waited to die.

John 17 is the most intimate passage in all of Scripture. I love that His grace even extended to sharing that with me.

He doesn't change. He prayed for me that day, and He continues today.

"It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Rom.8:34


Grace. "God's Riches at Christ's expense."