All About Grace

Tomorrow afternoon I will be returning to the Zoar Church, the first church to which I was appointed, to lead a memorial service for a friend of over 50 years.  Our friendship found its roots when I was his pastor.  Over the years we have fished together, shared meals, had conversations about faith for which the both of us could not find answers, visited in each other's home, and found in each other a place for vulnerability.  Before Warren died, he wrote down some instructions for his funeral.  On the phone his daughter shared a note for me.  "Tell Bill," he said, "not to preach me in....or out!"  He, of course, was talking about heaven. 

I am as convinced as was the Apostle Paul about the impossibility of being separated from the love of God that my friend is today in the heavenly place that Jesus promised to prepare for him.  It is not a matter of my being able to preach him into heaven, or him doing enough good things to earn his way into the heavenly place.  He has arrived safely Home as anyone of us arrives at our eternal Home.  It is not about our deeds, or the amount of money given, or about the recommendation of some influential soul who already has the ear of Jesus in heaven, but about grace.  The old gospel song we love to sing has it right when it sends our voices heavenward singing, "...'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."   

Our debt is always to grace.  The grace of God is a gift.  The assurance of the salvation we know, the forgiveness for ours sins, the unconditional love of God, and the resurrected life pioneered by Jesus and given to us is ours to know not because we deserve it, or have earned it, but because God in His kind mercy has chosen to grant it to us as a gift.  We sing the song about amazing and marvelous grace not because of the tune, but because we have come to know it as life giving truth in our own lives.