Don’t Get It / Get It

SCRIPTURE:  If the wicked are shown grace, they don’t seem to get it. In the land of right living, they persist in wrong living, blind to the splendor of God. You hold your hand up high, God, but they don’t see it. Open their eyes to what you do, to see your zealous love for your people. Isaiah 26:10-11 MSG

THOUGHT: There are two ways to look at God’s amazing grace. Way number one is to not get it. Way number two is to get it. As the former slave trader John Newton so famously penned, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.

Although God’s grace was there throughout his life, John couldn’t see it, and he didn’t feel lost either. He was a hard man, known for a profanity, coarseness, and debauchery which shocked even sailors. Serving on a slave ship from the tender age of 11, he had a nickname, “The Great Blasphemer,” and often led others away from the God his mother had taught him about.

The point here is that when we are lost, we often don’t know it. In the land of right living, surrounded by those who love us and have pointed the way, we persist in wrong living, blind to the splendor of God. God’s hand is high in the air, waving, trying to get our attention, trying to open our eyes to his zealous love. But we blink, look again, and say it’s just a mirage.

Then, one day, everything changes. We reach the end of our strategies to ignore that wave, that love, that call. Our spiritual eyes open, and sometimes the grief of their opening threatens to undo us. Like John, we’ve done a lot of damage to ourselves and others, but we reach for grace anyway, finally comprehending the incomprehensible: the love of God is not a mirage. We get it.

SONG: My Chains are Gone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-4NFvI5U9w

PRAYER: Thank you for continuing to wave, oh God, for continuing to try to get our attention until the day we see. You open our eyes to finally see your zealous love and amazing grace.