Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and makes us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
~ A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
~ paul, The Least of the Apostles, in Ephesians 2
Sometimes beloved. Oh my!
Who is this One who hath saved us?
Surely He had something else to do with His goodness…
It just doesn’t make any sense. He comes into this world, saves us from our sins and then has the jaw-dropping audacity to give us the power to actually be saved from ourselves. We actually begin to look a little bit like Him. People begin to actually catch the scent of G_d on our breath.
And then it gets better.
People get saved. Bills get paid. Circumstances get better. Suffering purifies our souls. Pain drives us to our knees into the very near presence of the Lover of our whole being. He becomes so real that we no longer believe in Him. We simply know Him.
And then it gets better.
He starts to pull out the stops and accelerate our lives. He hammers our existence with a joy unspeakable (and this writer has tried). He makes everything new in our lives. The words about pearls of great price and the Kingdom begin to make sense. And we even begin to do our math using the axioms of heaven. Clarity and pain and joy and suffering and power and trial and purpose and commission and Love begin to be the very warp and weave of our lives in Him.
And then it gets better.
Then He just decides to give us someone we never even really knew that we needed. Just because… Just because He is who He is. Into our life comes a soulmate, or lover or friend or spouse (or all of these rolled into one) and He makes us one with them. We began rich beyond any measure in Him, and then the one He brings us simply adds another enormous, nearly-infinite portion to this wealth! It is as if He has brought us to a place where we truly know that He is everything in two peoples lives – and it is in that space that those two are finally able to simply, truly, fully and profoundly love each other through the knowing and being known by each other. And in this gloriously rich vein, this writer will establish, by His Grace, the Doulos Home on 30 June, 2012. He will marry, literally, the princess of his and her visions and dreams. Yeah, He is good to us. Good beyond any measure.
And then it gets better.
In but a few breaths, the whispers of Love we call grace in this life will be given full voice. The beautiful shadows we find in marriage and relationship will be consummated in the full Light of the One who causes the shadows to be cast.
Why? i don’t know. But i will do nothing other than live in profound thankfulness to the One who has done the saving and the giving. Thank you G_d. Thou art worthy to receive honor and glory and power and riches and everything else in and under heaven! Amen.
