Amazing Grace

The breeze keeps flipping my notebook pages reminding me to look up...soak in....and relish these last few days of comfortable weather.

There are a handful of sunbathers rushing to finish their beach novels and the sails outnumber the motors by about 10 to 1.

The sand between my toes feels better than slipping in between freshly cleaned and wash-lined dried sheets.

I feel alive!

The wind is flipping my pages again...look up....soak in....breathe.

Out of 1000 songs, Amazing Grace explodes onto the iPod.

The last few Sunday sermons have been on God's grace. It is not my performance that justifies God's great gift of grace to me. I'm learning to rest in that fact alone. He loved me just as I was and am....after all he created me.

Performance and working our way to earn His favor comes from upbringing, religious rituals, society and family messages. Maybe, just maybe at judgment day my list of goods will out weigh the bads. It's almost laughable because where would the Almighty draw the line? What measly good deed is going to put me over the top? What act of kindness or donation to a good cause is going to finally tip me past the halfway mark on my good and bad deed scale? If I attend church 52 weeks out of the year (performance) or if I give 11% to help the needy instead of 10%, will that do it?

The most unsettling aspect of this amazing grace is that if we could "do" one thing to win God's favor, Christ would not have had to die and suffer his hideous passion. So I rest in this. Not that I will stop trying to please Him and doing good....even John Kerry got that right in the debate when he quoted James 2:20, "Faith without works is dead."

Pages flipping in the wind...look up...soak in...rest in God's Amazing Grace.

It feels great to be alive.