The one night of the week I make a concerted effort to go to bed “early”, and what happens? I get inspired to write a blog entry for the first time in weeks! Oh well…what can you do? I really hope this makes sense, because I’m not exactly wide awake at the moment… 
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I was laying there, thinking through my study of the Word tonight and thinking about the passage of Scripture I was pondering earlier and shared on my facebook page: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord”. One of my facebook friends commented on that passage, and her comment sparked a thought in me. My response was something to this effect: People may disappoint us, and we may disappoint people, but the Lord never fails us.
I began to think about the nature of mercy. Mercy by its very nature is, well, undeserved. Mercy is extended to those who don’t deserve it, whose actions would or should bring negative consequences. When someone disappoints us, we have the choice of either exercising our perceived right to punish them for their wrong, or extend mercy to them. But do we really have that right? If God treated me as my sins deserve where would I be? What debt does anyone owe me that is a more than I would owe my Father if He were to call in my debts? I would be lost indeed, and would never be able to repay.
God does not treat me as my sin deserves. He lavishes His love on me in spite of me most of the time. And how can I, who owes so much, demand from someone who owes me so little in comparison, be stingy in the mercy I show? That would be downright ungrateful. And yet, I do it all the time. And God continues to lavish His mercy and grace on me in a way that only a longsuffering, loving Father can. The Lord leaves me speechless sometimes…
I am reading a book about the Ten Commandments, and I have not even gotten past the third page for all that richness I am gleaning from this study! As I was reading through the passages in Deuteronomy and Exodus and pondering the author’s thoughts, it seemed to leap off the page to me in a new way that the Israelites were a stubborn, stiff-necked people from the start. Moses says in Deuteronomy 9:24 that they had been rebellious toward God from the the day he knew them. God reminds the people in Deuteronomy 7 that it was not because they were the greatest of nations that He had chosen them; rather, He set His affection on them for the sake of the oath He had sworn to their fathers. Israel’s deliverance was an act of grace based on God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The love and favor He lavished on them derived from that promise. If God had treated them as their actions deserved, they would have surely been in trouble! But God’s plan always transcended them, and their preservation was based on God’s promise not their performance.
Is this not a lovely foreshadowing of the grace lavished on us, the children of that promise which found its ultimate fulfillment in Christ? It has always been about grace, about God’s decision to love us in His Beloved if we fall on His mercy and call on His name. We who call on the name of the Lord find our hope, our strength and our security in God’s faithfulness, which He showed the Israelites in their deliverance from Egyptian slavery…which He showed them in saving a remnant even as He brought judgment upon them for breaking His covenant…which He shows to us in our deliverance from the slavery of sin as we rest in the finished work of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He does not treat us as our sin deserves.
Grace is truly amazing…
