The Gift of Grace

 In Ephesians 1:1-14 Paul speaks to the people about inheritance and grace. When I think of inheritance I immediately think of my own inheritance, not financial but physical and emotional.  My eyes are blue like my grandmother's, I look just like my mother, though my sister and I have often been mistaken for twins as we get older.  I have my father's personality; we like to be alone and can be a little too matter of fact at times. We grew up listening to my dad saying "that is a nit on a nit on a nit on an elephant" when rating a crisis.  I share with all of my siblings a tendency toward sarcasm which for better or worse has been passed on to all 11 of our parent’s grandchildren. 

Like most of you reading this I have things that I love about my inheritance and some I would rather deny and then there is a lot I just don't know.  I don't know what drove my ancestors, those look a likes with my laugh and smile, to work, love and play the way they did.  I get only a small glimpse of what makes them who they are.  The same way my own grown children don't understand the stress or elation over love, money or work that may have motivated some of my poorer or seemingly best parenting decisions.  And yet as children of God the greatest inheritance we receive is grace!

       Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking writes this about grace: "Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It's for you I created the universe.  I love you.”

          Every one of us has been given the gift of grace; it is in the warmth we feel on our backs on a sunny day, the sparrows at the feeder, the spontaneous laughter shared with family or friends, and even in the smile of a stranger.  Any time we experience that unexpected moment of relief, excitement, joy and even sorrow, we have accepted grace.  Grace waits for us, hovers over our heads, within an arm’s reach, grace waits for us through the night and greets us in the morning.        

       God’s grace allows us to see ourselves in each other; it is what we have in common.  

                                  We are family-can you tell?