The Gift -- Grace

      I remember as if it were yesterday, though it must have been some sixty-five years ago. It was an ordinary visit with my cousin with the extraordinary red hair. I'm sure we had played dolls all day, while our mothers shared their sister-lives through sign language. We must have let our Tiny Tears dolls exchange clothes during our play, but now it was time to gather my own things and go home. I'm sure I carried on about how much I loved a particular yellow dress belonging to my cousin's doll-- perhaps because it matched a favorite yellow dress my mother had made me. Seemingly without a second thought or regret, my cousin said, "You can have it, Charlanne." 

      Even then, my eight-year-old self tried to reject her sweet offering, the sacrifice seeming too much, but she insisted, and I rode home in mild disbelief at a child's atypical unselfishness. As you can see, the dress has faded with age, and well, Tiny Tears is somewhat broken like all of us, one rubber leg having fallen off. But it was a lesson that never left me, as I held onto that dress all these years-- that totally selfless, spontaneous offering, given for no other reason than love. I had done NOTHING to deserve the gift, given nothing in return except my awe and gratitude.

      Now isn't that the perfect picture of God's Grace?! The widely accepted Christian definition of "grace" is God's unmerited favor, as explained in The New Dictionary of Theology (Komonchak at al (eds), 1990): "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved." No matter how many prophets had foretold the coming of God's Messiah, throughout hundreds of years, how few accepted the Gift, have accepted the Gift of Jesus until this very day! I could have stubbornly refused that yellow doll's dress, so freely given, from my dear cousin. What I would have missed, even more than the pleasure of seeing it on my own doll, was the overwhelming awe and gratitude that stays with me to this day for the gift of love it symbolized. The dress will one day disintegrate, just like our our bodies, but the LOVE will never end.

      I know this with all my heart and soul!

      "Long ago the Lord said to Israel: 'I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.'"  (Jeremiah 31:3 NLT)

      "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him." (1 John 3:1 NIV)

      "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus."  (Romans 8: 37-39 CSB)