This is a season of ongoing, continuous grace. Unmerited, undeserved. I will add an extra “r” to that last word – underserved. We have been freely given this gift so that it may be re-gifted. Now it has direct application to a customary habit during the last week of December, typically vacation for many. The Christmas season (the world says in cringe-worthy fashion: “post-Christmas letdown) is marked by returning, exchanging, and re-gifting. Grace is meant to be given, but it is often underserved by us. We regret missed opportunities to do that, and at the end of each day, if it’s true for me, it’s likely true for you, we cast our regrets, shame, and guilt upon God, the great grace giver. We fall short of the expectations that He must surely have for us. That’s when we get our “booster shot” of grace, that blessed assurance that keeps on coming.

Many of the psalms make fantastic bedtime prayers. Here are a couple:

By day the Lord directs his love, at night, his song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life. (42:8)

Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. (149:5)

Grace that is embedded in our DNA enables us to forgive. It also helps us to receive forgiveness. There are just not enough, but also a ton of, words and stories that can be spoken about that one word – grace. An endless supply, a continuously overflowing fountain a la Niagara Falls. Grace was never more beautifully given, more lovingly gift-wrapped, than when it arrived in swaddling cloths. Whatever those are. Even if we don’t know exactly what the word swaddle and all its derivatives mean according to Webster’s, we get the gist. Grace came crying, hungry, struggling to find warmth and breath. Grace came after centuries of promise, prophecy, and oppression. To clarify: the birth of Christ, Word made flesh, was the culmination, the grand finale, of grace. See how difficult this is, trying to “nail down” grace? It is the undercurrent, the fabric, the modus operandi.

Grace comes again every December, and it will always visit us, inhabit us. His love does not depend on how much or how often we re-gift it to others. Love – and grace – come to us unconditionally.

Pastor Art