Good and loving – and transforming – God,
thank you for making us new.
A few days ago in our prayer journal
we were invited to consider what Jesus might ask us to leave behind
that we might more closely follow him.
In response I drew – as best I could – two hands
with palms up-turned and open to set free the habit I named and wrote above,
that I might be leave behind for Christ.
And in the next days I was aware that I was thinking in new ways
about a relationship that had felt strained to me –
all out of my expectations of how exchanges “should” play out.
And then I knew – I had experienced my first step in being set free,
of knowing release from this way of being
that has been neither helpful nor loving.
The past two days dear God, I have read about grace…
Quinn Caldwell wrote the other day
“It turns out that with God,
[our covenantal relationship is] not so much a quid pro quo as a quid pro nil.
The promise, the salvation, the future on offer to every living thing is free,
and there’s nothing you …can do to earn it, or to lose it.”
Today Ron Buford, having been accused of offering in his preaching, “cheap grace”,
reported his response saying “Thank you. God’s grace is so cheap, it’s free!”
So thank you God for your ever-available, life-giving,
sin-forgiving, new-life-making, affordable-across-the-board grace,
by which we are set free and made new, day by day.
Amen