Here’s a thought to chew on this week:
Faith is nothing more than accepting God’s kindness.
Ponder that for a moment…
I don’t know about you, but that’s the type of statement I want to embrace. That’s the type of truth that I want to wrap around me like a big quilt on a chilly night.
I love this truth so much because I know how it feels not to believe it. Not matter how often I hear the Gospel, I still seem to suffer from a persistant and nagging fear that God is disappointed with me. In those moments of doubt, I surrender to the lie that I God’s love and affection are things to be achieved…and I’m painfully aware that if God’s grace where a prize to be won by Christian competing in some sort of cosmic game, I’d finish at the end of the pack.
But God is not an olympic judge holding up score cards. God is not professor grading our work.
God is compassionate and generous.
He’s compassionate because He knows that none of us – not even one – could earn a decent score or make the grade. He knows how deeply flawed and broken His children and out of the knowledge He comes to us.
He’s generous as He provides for us all that we need. He gives us everything we cannot give ourselves and more. He has spread a banquette before us and invited us to feast…to indulge…on His body and His blood. God’s hospitality knows no equal.
Our Father knows us by name, by nick-name for that matter. He sees all that we lack, He sees all of our failures, and all of our wounds. And His miraculous response to this is to drench us with life – and life to the full!
Sometimes God’s gifts come in packages we’re not sure we want to tear into. Some of the life that God gives looks like discipline, tough-to-swallow truth, and, there are times when God will bless His children through suffering…holding them all the while. But God always gives life and He gives it abundantly.
And our job in all of this..?
Simple: To receive God’s kindness.
To feast on His grace.
To go to bed one night a condemned sinner and to wake up on Christmas morning ready to rip into the beautifully wrapped gifts He’s set before us.
Because our God is Compassionate and Generous. He bids us to daily come to Him and accept His unfathomable, irresistible, unchangeable, unachievable gift: His Son Jesus Christ
Accept God’s kindness today…
