My friend Dan and I ate soft-serve ice cream and reflected over the last, oh, 25 years.
Back then, we were friends in Philadelphia.
We were young men, sensitive men, spiritual men, but basically unformed men, looking for a place in the world; seeking to understand how God made us.
We are now both professors at different ends of the country. Not that being in academia itself is anything (oh no). But for the two of us it has been the unfolding of life tapestries.
And as I ate my ice cream I realized that grace is more easily seen when the tapestry of many years has been woven.
Sometimes you can't easily recognize grace up close. It is mixed in with the uncertainty of life and, for us, the heat and humidity of the Philadelphia summers, when wishes and hopes are particularly disheveled and out-of-focus.
Grace is not a point in time.
It is a thread through time.
A many-colored thread through time.
Logos2Go
Proverbs 3.34 Surely he scorns the scorners: but he gives grace unto the lowly.
John 1.16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
1 Peter 4.10 As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
1 comments:
Boy I wish I could have been there, Dave.
I was reminded of 1 Tim 1:14. "...the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." (ESV)
Sometimes grace can flood our lives all at once and other times little by little but as one looks back over the years, as you describe, we see the vast accumulation of grace in our lives. We see an overflowing beyond overflowing, we see a grace that "abounded exceedingly" (ASV), a grace that is "more than abundant" (NASB), an "exceedingly abundant" grace (NKJV).
There are certain verses that almost need all of the different versions to express the fullness of the meaning. This is one of them for me.
Post a Comment