Grace and Mercy

This week someone I knew was murdered.  I can not get her out of my mind.  And I can't get out of my mind how someone who was so sweet, loving, and caring toward everyone she met ends up  in a situation where her life comes to a tragic end.

I have been trying to reconcile that into Robbey's sermon from last Sunday.  His sermon was that our lives are not based on luck, they are not based on self determination.  They are based on the fact that God reigns in them.

For me there is something so totally humbling about that.  I come into contact with people whose lives just seem to suck.  I am sure you do too.  They just have one bad thing after another that happens to them. It is as if they are on a snowball of bad luck and it just picks up speed downhill.  Now some of it is because of choices or even past choices that are catching up with them.  But that isn't always the case.

So I have thought a lot about that this week.  God has given me an amazing life.  In fact, at times I am almost embarrassed by how good it is.  I have done nothing to deserve this life.  It is simply God's grace on my life.

I read something this week that said Grace is when God gives me good things I don't deserve.  Mercy is when God holds back what I truly do deserve.  And the two of these together are blessings.

There is a sense of gratitude for Jesus dying on the cross that I can never repay.  That I just have to accept as God's love.

But there is a sense of gratitude for his grace and mercy on my life that I feel the need to repay.  I didn't do anything to deserve God's blessings in my life, but I can certainly have a grateful heart that pays it forward.  God help me live a life that shows that same grace and mercy to others around me.

Ephesians 4:7 "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned (divide, allocate, assign) ."