What makes your eyes light up with glee, or stirs you to an unforced smile?
Is it the 4-year old who stomps through puddles—without boots? Is it the lily blooming on some sun-drenched bank, so hidden no one else can find it? Is it the ballad from your youth that fills your thoughts with gentle love?
So grace delights us when we learn that it is God’s first way of seeing us—that He is glad to see us dancing in the rain, and loving every growing thing, and finding hope in much-loved songs. It is His joy to know our joy: He made us for receiving love and sharing it with others.
And when we chide the gleeful child, or calculate the price of flowers, or brush away the tenderness we knew, we turn our backs on His warm grace to find cold comfort in self-righteousness.
Only God is always right, and only God is always gracious. Jesus said of His Father, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45).
Receive His gift. Enjoy His grace.
And stay in it.
—Bill Knott