Here's an article I wrote for CACSD's professional journal, Partner, which was published this week. I guess I'm now a published author. Go figure.
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Greater Than All Our SinsThere we were, sitting in a circle, gathered as a community around the sacraments and the cross. The music was playing in the background, communion was being reflected on in the foreground, and the lyrics of some songs were drifting through my head. “I’m forgiven because you were forsaken.” “Amazing love, how can it be?” “Thank you for the cross, my friend.” “Bought with the precious blood of Christ.”
I looked outside and the snow was falling (more along the lines of gusting in one of the squalls that had become common this winter), with a colour as white as, well, snow. All I could do was be thankful that our Saviour would die for us. I looked around and saw the faces of the students who had gathered together for chapel and was thankful that Christ had died for their sins.
We work in a profession that can easily be tainted by scandal. It can be marred by acts of mistrust, gossip, slander, lying, stealing, cheating, and more. As people who work with these children of God on a daily basis, we can either show an abundance of judgment, or we can come alongside and share the grace of God with those who may have forgotten. The grace that is greater than all our sins. The grace that loves beyond all measure. The grace that was shown when Christ was sacrificed for us. The grace that was exemplified when Christ rose from the grave.
Grace, God’s amazing grace. Have you experienced His grace today? Have you enacted His grace today? As the time rushes ahead, as deadlines come closer, as students get more stressed, I believe we should aim to live our lives with grace, and perhaps have times where students can rest in the presence of our Living God and experience His grace first hand. I’ve come to a point in my life where I try to embody grace in all I do. It’s sometimes easy to do, yet many times I struggle.
I don’t quite see eye to eye with someone, so I want to close myself off. I believe that you should get what you deserve; so many times I place justice before mercy. But that’s not the way it is with Christ. He mediates on our behalf, sitting at the right hand of the Father, still showing the scars where the nails pierced his hands and the spear his side. What love is this, which knows no bounds? What grace has been shown to us – we who are the least deserving of it? It’s times like this when I’m taken back to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and through this passage, I’m humbled.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8,9 NIV).
