“Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus.” [1]
While living through this pandemic I have had time to think about grace. After all, grace is a BIG Salvation word. God’s pure grace! Established by Father’s love, taught and endorsed by the Spirit who comes alongside to help us live it out, and deeply rooted in the life, death and bodily resurrection of Jesus. Grace. A wellspring of unfailing, surprising favour. He warned us that hard times would come. But the fire of God’s life-changing grace energetically blazes within us. And, in fullness. In his book, John tells us, “From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another.” [2]
We may at some time or other have returned from an outing or holiday with photographs on our devices. We have tried to capture our personal experience of God’s beautiful creation. When friends arrive for a visit we soon pull out the laptop and give them a flavour of the beauty we beheld while away. Sadly, many of us settle for looking at the images of God’s beauty from a distance. A photo is not the same as actually being there. We are content to look at the pictures of other peoples experiences. It is one thing to look at well-taken photographs of God’s grandeur in creation but it is quite another to climb that mountain and smell the fresh air. To feel the sunlight through the clouds and behold the immense panoramic views of God’s world.
Grace is like that. We need to experience it first hand. “We are saved by grace.” [3] There is no other way. And since we are ‘being’ saved, grace forms an integral part of the process of drawing us on to maturity. Grace is that invisible reality which keeps us buoyant and floods everything we do. Speaking, thinking, doing and because we are saved by grace – it satisfies who we are! The problem is often that we don’t understand invisibility. After all, we cannot see grace. We only experience the fruit of grace. We have learned to prefer the seen. But Paul shows us a better way. In making the transition into grace Paul makes it very clear, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” [4]
[1] 1 Timothy 1:14 [2] John 1:16 [3] Ephesians 2:8 [4] 2 Corinthians 4:18