The sun rises every morning. This might seem too obvious to mention, but have you ever stopped to ponder this miracle? Each and every morning from the beginning of time until today, it has done the same thing. No mistakes. No absent-minded forgetfulness. We don’t have to send a reminder, or a follow-up email. It’s a sheer and unwarranted grace that makes the sunrise possible each morning.
Most of us have played that little game with children where you ask them what sound a particular animal makes, for the purpose of making them respond with their cute imitation. Cows go moo. Cats go meow. Dogs go bow-wow, or woof or arf.
Once, while playing this game with Libby Anne, I got a memorable response. All of her answers were predictable until we reached the rooster.
“How does the rooster go?” I asked.
After a short pause, she said:
“Let there be light!”
I have passed this story on to several people over the last couple years, so if you’re hearing it again, I apologize. Anyways, this time it has a point other than isn’t my daughter just so adorable!
The point is this. Sometimes, we think we make the sunrise. Not literally of course. Very few of us are that stupid. But in more subtle ways, we think we can control God, that we can manipulate him, that the good things which happen to us are anything more than divine magnanimity. And we get to thinking maybe we aren’t so bad after all, if we can command things like the sun to rise with a cocksure cock-a-doodle-do.
The truth is that sunrises exist to show us something about grace; and because of God’s grace through the amazing generosity of our donors, Whetstone Boys Ranch will begin sharing this message on October 1st:
There is something called a second chance. It doesn’t exist because you did anything to deserve it. It exists because God exists. Grace exists because God sent his son into the world for our sake…and that’s all there is to it.
No cock-a-doodle-do necessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment