TRUSTING WHAT'S TRUE (April 17, 2020)

Is grace, at heart, believable? ‘Of course,’ you say.  Why not believe?  It’s the noun that always follows “Amazing,” the tune the bagpipers skirl at dawn; the soaring hymn a tenor lifts into a vast cathedral. For some, it may be what the sermon is about, or what we learned in Bible class. But is grace believable at the baseline of our fears—in those tough places in the soul where shame and memory combust to make us cringe again, again?  Does grace reach down below the intellect, the wonderful idea, and heal those wounds we so much never want to show the world? At its heart—and in our hearts—grace offers us what no one else is giving.  Redemption is for real—for all those moments and those years we’ve blown it big and ruined all our future.  “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way.  And the Lord has laid on Him”—on Jesus, the only righteous one who ever lived—"the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). It seems too good—too kind; too merciful—to be true.  And so we linger in the half-light of our fears, humming a tune we dream might yet be ours. The hymn has outlived every copyright.  God’s grace is clearly in the public domain. Make this song yours.  And stay in grace. - Bill Knott

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