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Is Grace Far Away?
The view from an airplane window is pretty amazing. Everything looks so small and far away. Sometimes God's grace looks small and far away, but the Bible tells us about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, all done for YOU! God's grace is close and personal. God's grace is for YOU!
John 20:31
When you fly, do you like the aisle seat, the middle seat, or a window seat? Now, I don’t fly too often, and I really don’t think I have a great preference of one or the other. Just put me on the plane and give me a seat, maybe toward the front of the plane, and I’m okay with that. I’m ready to fly.
But I have to admit that the view is sitting in a window seat are really pretty amazing. From high above, when you look down and you see the the towns and the cities and the rivers and lakes, they look so, so small and you can’t really see them too well because they seem so very far, far away. And if it’s a cloudy day, you can’t see any of that. But when the plane begins to descend and make its final approach toward where you’re heading. Those cities and towns and lakes and rivers become bigger and bigger. You can see them clearer as you get closer and closer to the ground.
God’s grace, his undeserved love for us in Jesus our Savior is a wondrous gift. It is only by his grace that we are saved. And yet sometimes it feels so very far away, doesn’t it? It seems like you are in an airplane so high above God’s grace that you have a hard time seeing it clearly, or even at all. When you know what you have done was wrong and sinful, guilt seems to keep you far away from grace. How can that possibly be for me? When you experience personal hardship, the sorrow and the hopeless feelings seem like you are so far away from grace. Does God really love me like he says he does? When you are ridiculed and mocked for your faith, the pain of that seems to keep you far, far away from grace. And if I am so loved by my God, how could he possibly let this happen to me?
Feeling so far away, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And yet, is the grace of God really far away at all? In fact, it’s actually closer and easier to see clearly than you sometimes think. When you’re looking in the right place, the only place where it is revealed to us there, we see it clearly when we look in the pages of God’s Word. There we see God’s grace with such clarity as it shows us Jesus, the Savior, whom God sent into the world out of his great love for sinners like you and like me, love that is so undeserved and yet completely free.
Being in the Bible is like riding that airplane, descending from high above, bringing us down from the guilt and the sorrow, the hopelessness and the pain. So that we see Jesus clearly. And we know for certain that what we have in him, and that he indeed truly does love us. In summarizing his entire gospel and really a summary of all of God’s Word. John tells us in chapter 20, verse 31,
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31 EHV)
Seeing Jesus in the pages of God’s Word, we see our forgiveness, our salvation, and our future that is all ours by God’s grace. And his grace is never a far, far away from our sight any longer. Instead, Grace is seen up close and personal. And we see it clearly. Amen.
