Today's Scripture:
Luke 2:40
And the child (Jesus)
grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was
upon him.
Today's Thought:
This verse caught me by surprise! I guess I had read it many times, but this
time the association of grace with Jesus caught me off guard. Jesus had grace? I've always been taught that Jesus was
without sin, so why would he need grace?
This got me to thinking that grace is deeper than I had given it
credit. Grace can’t be just forgiveness,
it must be something more!
Jesus was not a recipient of grace, he was a container of
grace. And as we see in his life he was
also a dispenser of grace - it poured out from him. This may be why he had such an appeal to
people who needed grace - they could sense this beautiful aura he had and even
if they didn't recognize it as God's grace, they were nonetheless attracted to
it.
I certainly need grace.
You certainly need grace. We are
all recipients of grace, but now I am thinking that it goes deeper than that
for me and for you. We need to be containers
of grace and as our containers fill up we will become dispensers of grace.
I have thought of grace as a spiritual "get of out jail
free" card. Whenever I sin, I cash
it in and go on with the game. I'm not
thinking that way anymore. Grace is more
like a liquid being poured over me and even poured into me. It doesn’t just come and go when I need it,
it comes and stays. It soaks into my
soul so that it builds up to the point where I not only become a beneficiary of
grace, I become a container of grace.
This is where we start to realize that grace is, as they call
it, the" gift that keeps on giving."
The person graced becomes the person grace-filled becomes the person
graceful.
Today's Prayer:
Graceful God, lead me to understand that your grace is not
just something for me, it is something in me.
It doesn't just come and go, it comes and stays. It comes and changes. Your grace makes us strong and wise. Help us to be containers of this amazing
grace. In the name of the graceful one,
our Savior Jesus, we pray. Amen.
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