By Not Known
Perhaps you know this experience.
You start doing an act of kindness for some people. At first they
thank you. But after a time it all becomes routine and they cease to
say ‘thanks’. You feel taken for granted and maybe even resentful.
Do we take God’s grace for
granted? God has done us a huge favour through Jesus. He has
sought us out with his love and reconnected us to himself. There was
a huge price to be paid and God paid it all. In Jesus he carried the
punishment that we deserved and because he carried it for us we have
salvation and life before God.
But are we grateful? This
morning’s Bible passage (Luke 7:36-50) challenges us in this area. The
Pharisee saw only an unclean woman who had defiled his house by
entering it and who had no sense of social propriety. Jesus saw a
woman who had sinned much, had been forgiven much and who now thanked
much. Her gestures of thanks were extravagant and even embarrassing –
but surely they are to be preferred to the polite praise or
indifference that we sometimes bring to God.
How do we show gratitude for
grace? Our words are important. Through words of hymns and
prayers we can express heartfelt praise directly to God and also bear
testimony to each other. We can also be clear in our words to each
other – making it plain that anything worthwhile that we are or do is
due to God’s intervention.
We can also show gratitude by
living in a manner equal to the grace we have received. We are to
remember that.. you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God
with your body (1 Cor 6:19-20).
Our monthly Lord’s Supper is a
timely reminder of how greatly we have been loved by God. Let’s also
make it a monthly opportunity to thank God for his grace, to remind
one another how much we have been loved; and to commit ourselves to
show thanks to God by the way we live.
As Isaac Watts puts it:
Were the whole realm of nature
mine,
that were an off ring far too
small:
love so amazing, so divine,
demands, my soul, my life, my
all!