Amazed By Grace

Devotional for Sunday, December 26, 1999 by Janice Ruppenthal

I named my daughter Grace. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw her tiny, not yet fully formed face on the ultrasound monitor. It was truly an undeserved, unimaginable gift to be able to see my baby weeks before I was able to feel her bumping around inside me. I was in awe.

I find that reaction, that sense of amazement, monumentally dwarfed by what happens when I think for any real length of time about what God has done for us through Jesus.

That trembling, consuming, indescribable humility at contemplating God's vastness is reflected in the psalmist's declaration: "What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou carest for him?" (Psalm 8:4 KJV) Sometimes I have to turn my thoughts away, or I think something in my head might burst from the magnitude of it all.

That God should bother to concern himself with us as fallen creatures, let alone incarnate himself as one of us in Jesus, is undeserved in and of itself. But to actually suffer and die, and then rise again, just so a bunch of conceited, power-hungry little human beings might be given a new, abundant, holy life?

Let it suffice to say that we should be glad that it somehow made sense to God to do such a wondrously compassionate thing. He has so much to teach us about forgiveness and grace. Praise be to our loving, holy God!

Prayer: Dearest God, we can't even come close to expressing enough thanks for what you have done for us. Help us to try anyway, relying on you for wisdom and strength. In your Son's holy name. Amen.

Janice Ruppenthal <jaernogr@magma.ca>
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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