Covered

It’s a miracle really, this plan of God’s. The plan to share His love with us…weak human vessels. Not that He created us weak and incompetent–His creation is always strong and powerful. It’s just that detail of free will and our insistence that we are just as good, and deserve whatever we want…weak human vessels.

Genesis 6:5  The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was ONLY EVIL ALL THE TIME.

Ouch. 

I’m not an Old Testament scholar.  But I know enough to know that as time went on God’s people (like us) kept messing up–obstinate and belligerent and evil hearted–and God covered them with compassion and love, and forgave them and took them back until they messed up…again…and then again…and then again.

Jump ahead to the next miracle plan that the Trinity had/has–send Jesus to rescue us, and have us weak human vessels be the ones to share who He is and how He loves. He builds this church–this body of believers, who will share who He is and how He loves–on Peter. Peter the rock, who looked into the eyes of Jesus and declared with great passion and resolve that he would never fall away, that he would defend his Lord to the end. Peter, who within hours ran away denying that he even knew his…Lord. 

Talk about the need for grace. Talk about needing to be covered by grace. Peter felt it.  He lived it, just as we do. We need it when we yell at our kids because we’re impatient. We need it when we’re less than honest in our relationships because we’re lazy. We need it when we are allured by this world because we’re bored. We need grace. We need the covering of grace. 

From the one who criticizes everything, to the one who judges everyone, to the husband with wandering eyes, to the wife with a wandering mind, to the one who drinks to get numb, to the single who settles for less, to the addict who can’t escape the pull: we’re all covered by grace.

All this failure and sin, and yet His plan works because of grace. 

When we need it, live in it and extend it…grace works and Jesus is known. 

In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.  Colossians 1:6