Grace

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;” Ephesians 2:8

Grace – Rejoice! Give Freely! Bestow Favor! Give Thanks!  Show Gratitude!  All of these meanings are found in the same Greek root that we find here as “grace”.  Grace is charis.  All of these words go back to chara, the word for “joy”.  Even the eucharist is a celebration of gratitude and thanksgiving.  God’s interaction with us is a cause for JOY.

Feasts, weddings, festivals, celebrations – throughout the Bible all of these occasions are expressions of the good news that God gives His children.  Remember the prodigal son?  When he returns home, the father throws a big party.  There is joy in the house.  The emphasis of the Bible is that this is pure delight.  God loves to provide benevolence to His chosen ones.  It gives Him great joy.  And we get to share in that joy because He rescues us.

For Paul, the culmination of God’s complete delight in His creation is the cross.  The place of agony and suffering is really the paradigm of heavenly joy.  Why?  Because the cross is the final step in God’s plan to redeem His entire creation.  What God did was utterly amazing.  He took the most evil act of all creation and turned it into the most blessed event of all time.  He transformed the apparent victory of Satan into the defeat of sin itself.  He rewrote the agony of the crucifixion into a symphony of forgiveness.

I need to keep this thought in mind as I go through my day.  Life’s circumstances can often derail me.  I start to think about my struggles, my problems and the things that I cannot control.  I wade in the waters of loss.  Then I am reminded of the cross.  It is the symbol of my celebration.  God has given me a gift that nothing can take away from me.  No difficulty, no dilemma, no disaster can snatch away the joy that God rescued me.  I belong to Him and He never lets go of one of His own.

I have a daily cross to bear.  So do you.  But it does not have to be drudgery.  The cross we bear under the banner of Jesus Christ is the symbol of JOY!  It is grace-full living.   So go.  En-JOY the day God has given you.

Today:  Every time I see a cross today, any cross, I will remember it is the source of my personal JOY.  God delivered me.

(more tomorrow)