"An Act of Grace pt. 3"

My dad once told me a story about how he chaperoned my sister and her friends at a carnival years ago. He explained to me how they had a wonderful time and how he enjoyed seeing my sister have fun with her friends. He then told me about how their fun escapade took a sharp turn for the worst. He spoke of how the only restrooms that were available were "port-0-potties" and that he had no choice but to use one. Not the most convenient, but it works. He then painted one of the most gruesome pictures that my mind has ever envisioned. See, my dad carried his keys on his belt, and while preparing to use the restroom he went to un-buckle his belt and felt his keys drop. Hearing a small plop and some brief clanging, it sounded as if the keys fell on the floor. Upon completing his pit stop, he went to pick the keys up off of the floor... There was only one problem, the keys weren't on the floor. He searched and searched and then reality hit... The keys had fallen into the toilet.

This kind of situation is never convenient, but it would have been a lot better if it were in a 'normal' public restroom... Instead, it was in a "port-o-potty," a public toilet that doesn't flush. To make it worse it was the end of the day, so the blue water was obviously not in there alone. My dad had a choice to make, he could either: He could forget about the keys and start using his spare (or get some new ones made), or reach into this public waste and retrieve his keys.

Needless to say he chose to retrieve his keys. He reluctantly rolled up his sleeve, leaned over and reached his arm into the toilet and began the search for his keys. He then told me that he got a grip on them, along with some other things, and began to pull them out. While preparing to pull them out the other objects in the toilet interfered, and the keys slipped down further. He muscled his way through this centralized cesspool and gripped the keys tightly, squeezing everything extra through his fingers. At last, he got his keys.

This is the picture that I get when I look at Ephesians 2:4-5, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ EVEN WHEN WE WERE DEAD IN TRANSGRESSIONS - it is by grace you have been saved." This text deals with the reality that while we were formerly dead without a glimmer of hope, God, in his own sovereign power, raised us with Christ; but the part that sticks out to me is when he did it, "Even when we were dead in transgressions..." My understanding of God is such that God is a holy God, and cannot dwell in, or even stand the sight of sin. When Christ was on the cross, the accusation that rose toward God the Father was that of God's turning his back on Jesus... "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus became the very picture, the very object of our sin, and in doing so He also became the object of God's wrath.

And yet this passage tells us that God literally reached into the world and retrieved each and every one of us, while we were resting in our own cesspool of sin. God did not wait until we cleaned ourselves up, he did not get his spare key and forget about us, but he set his own holy nature aside and came down to earth, retrieving and redeeming that which was lost... You and me.

Here's my suspicion:

Many of us have no real concept of the reality of God's grace. We don't really know what it looks like, or what God actually did for human kind. We sing songs like "Amazing Grace", but it has no meaning behind it. We claim to be Christians but have no idea how we got to be. Well, I hope the picture that I have painted for you will help your understanding of the gruesome process that God initiated just to redeem you and I.

Here's my challenge:

Read Ephesians 2:1-10; reflect on how God, in his own strength, has achieved salvation for humanity; pray that God would allow you to understand, receive and reciprocate his grace to any and everybody that you come into contact with.

Be blessed family