While shaking my head over a story of yet another egregious moral failure that appeared in our newspaper yesterday - this time a grandmother and local mayor caught stealing $9000 from a church where she volunteered to work in the office - I had another grace awakening! Once again I came to understand that God's love story for us, which we celebrate anew this Advent season, is so amazing precisely because it is told to a dark world in desperate need of the Light. God looks over a world where people hate each with murderous intent in His Name! He sees cruelty on a scale that is beyond my imagination. He hears the secret conversations we have inside our own heads- where we lust, covet, and hate in secret. He sees the mass murderers in action and the little child learning to sin - and loves this world anyway.
You and I become impatient with someone after just a few failures. We are ready to dismiss a person from our life for a sin or two. When I look at all the evil around me and feel the storms of temptation that blow over my own heart, the story of Noah makes a lot more sense to me than the story of Jesus. I can understand God's anger and the solution He proposed! "God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”" (Genesis 6:5-7, The Message) That makes sense, doesn't it? Just destroy it and start over!
But, the New Covenant is different. God acts from an amazing grace, a love that defies my understanding. God steps into the darkness and reveals the Light. He intervenes, not to destroy but to restore. Advent is summed up in this passage which says - "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." (Romans 5:6-8, NLT)
Our brokenness becomes the place for the display of God's beauty! Our sinfulness provides the canvas on which He paints His picture of forgiveness.
The darkness makes His Light shine brilliantly.
We must not make the faulty leap in reasoning that would then say, "well, then let us sin all the more!" The Word reminds us that His desire is transformation and that when His love touches us, we are changed. "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:1-2, NIV)
Today, I am filled with a new sense of hope - for myself, for the world that I live in. It is not a hope that springs from any human self-improvement program or some personal victory. This hope comes from the promise of Jesus Christ to love us despite our sin. Advent sings with joyful celebration -"He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found!" My prayer today is that His grace will teach me to be 'grace-full.' Instead of seeking to dismiss or destroy those who sin - against God or even against me with some small offense - I pray that I will be full of love that looks for a way to restore.
Are you in despair this morning? Are you discouraged - by your own sins, by the failures of a friend or family member, by the darkness of the world?
Fall on your knees and look up to the Cross where the broken Savior built a bridge that connects us to our Father. Take renewed hope and rejoice in the amazing grace that can transform the most desperate sin or situation into a thing of beauty.
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Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods,
rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love. - Isaac Watts
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