The Advent of Grace

God oppresses the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Ephesians 5:21 (Proverbs 3:34)


Grace-unmerited favor.

As we experience the Advent Season, we focus on the grace of God that was given through the birth of Jesus, the Christ. As we reflect on how Jesus came to be born, we find that we have little understanding of God's purposes and how he effects our redemption through them.  We are left to read His word and trust in His love.

Isn't that how grace always is? Are not His purposes usually a mystery to us? How often do we pray for days, weeks, years, with seemingly no answer? Only in retrospect do we see that God's grace has slipped quietly into our lives, answering our prayers as quietly and unobtrusively as the birth of a baby in a stable. Our prayers were for an outcome; His purposes included the process.

Praying for a change in heart that that I knew I was powerless to achieve, I found after years of prayer the change had been miraculously accomplished. I do not understand His purpose in making me wait. I know that part of the delay was my own failure to humble myself to Him. I also know that He waited long enough for me to be certain that my change of heart was His grace and not my doing; He receives the glory, and I trust Him more than ever.

We had no choice in the timing of Jesus' birth. His birth and death and resurrection were collectively unmerited favor delivered to those who mostly did (and do) not recognize their need. That grace is offered with extraordinary patience to all who have been called to receive it, and given to all who accept it.

Daily grace, the grace that changes the way we think and act, that changes the way we love our neighbor, treat our children, value our wives, do our acts of service, even how we do the menial tasks of daily life, is given in the same mysterious way. It is offered to all who have been called to receive it, and given to all who accept it.

We receive daily grace in the same manner that we receive Jesus: we recognize our need, humbling ourselves and acknowledging our powerlessness to do what only God can do, and asking for His deliverance, both in our salvation, which is complete, and in our sanctification, which is an unending process growing out of daily renewal in His Word.

The Advent of Grace is a River, flowing from the throne of God to us.

Thanks you, Father God, for the gift of Your Son, and for the daily, eternal flow of grace from Your throne into our lives.  Amen.