By: Terry Barlow
The other night we were invited out to a Christmas dinner by dear friends. Before the food we ordered was actually served we were presented with gifts by surprise. What was even more surprising was that the gifts kept coming and coming and mounting up in such abundance that it was overwhelming for us. We had never before been treated to such a lavish display of generosity in our lives. We had never been the recipients of such gracious giving at anytime in our lives that either of us could recall.
What was still more startling about it was that I had been asked not to call anymore after attempting to intervene in a crisis in this family only a few months earlier! So I thought I had been blacklisted.
The more I ponder this development and turn of events the more I am helped to understand the lavishness of the grace extended to us through the cross of Jesus Christ. I kept thinking and wanting to say in the restaurant, “but, we don”t deserve all this!”
But somehow our friends saw it differently. And when it comes to the favor we as believers enjoy before God, we don’t deserve that either, but our Abba Father sees that differently too, as He beholds us through the lens of the shed blood of His Most Highly Favored Son, who absorbed our punishment so we could reap His reward and His favor with the Father.
That night in the restaurant (more upscale than we were accustomed to) we were literally reaping tangibly of the reward planned for us so long ago, before the foundation of the world. But we were reminded that it isn’t just metaphysical, it’s material and physical too, the overflowing measure of His deep love for us. (Reminiscent of how the father ran out to embrace and shower his love upon his prodigal son, and of how Esau did the same for his wayward brother Jacob, who had twice betrayed him in earlier years.)
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