by Chad Hyatt
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Reflection—‘that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all’
The Temptations sang it in the Seventies: ‘Ball of confusion… that’s what the world is today!’ The old folks said we live in a ‘sin-sick world’. But it’s also a ‘grace-drenched’ world, as a professor of mine once observed. Both of these can be true at the same time. But one of these is by far greater, and that one is the grace of God. We live in critical times, yes—as in truth, every generation does in one way or another. But in our despair, we are prone to underestimate the grace of God. For Paul, what God has done in Jesus calls all the world into God’s saving justice. Grace is the generous welcome of God that heals our wounded world upon the rough wood of the cross. Just keeping your head above water when the waves of chaos seem to ever swarm around us is no easy task. How much harder is it for us to faithfully follow Jesus when God’s saving justice calls us to be fully present precisely where the wounds and brokenness of our world— and of ourselves—are laid bare and bloody. It’s hard to share your food with the hungry. It’s hard to welcome the stranger. It’s hard to make peace at the knife-point of violence. But always and in every way, the grace of God is there, and it weaves it’s healing way amid the economic injustice, systemic racism and genderism, and hateful fear that encamp in every dark corner of our culture. God is always present, just as we who follow God are called to be present, even when we feel forsaken. God is at work, just as we are called to work, even when we wonder if our labor is in vain. Grace is enough, especially when we feel we are not. Upon this grace all the promises of God for human well-being and liberation rest. And those promises are guaranteed for every one of us.
Prayer: Grace-full God, let our hearts not be so overwhelmed that we forget your grace is enough.