Amazing Grace

Last week a Christian woman offered to help with an outreach ministry. Her offer was generous, and totally unexpected. When I thanked her, she said, “Doing this seems the most natural thing to do. This is why I am here.”

When I read today’s devotional from Ears from Harvested Sheaves, I thought of her and what she did, and how she illustrates the grace of God.

Today’s verses are from Exodus. God tells Moses to take His people from Sinai where they received His commandments, and lead them to the land He has promised them. Moses responded, “If I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.”

And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then he said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.” (Exodus 33:14-16)

I’d never thought about this in these terms, but the reading points out that grace is always “found.” I know that it is not earned, merited, or worked into, but the term “found” is a good one. It is like the New Testament parable Jesus told about a man who found treasure hid in a field. As the author of my reading explains, this man was not thinking about the treasure, but just ploughing this field with no idea that there was “gold beneath the clods.”

Suddenly, and without expecting it, the man discovered treasure. Jesus said that for joy, he went and sold all he had so he could buy that field.

This is how grace is found. It came to me suddenly, unexpectedly, like a treasure which I had no previous concept of until it appeared. No one could have prepared me, or told me to look, or even described the way to find it, but when grace came into my heart, I found that I had a treasure worth all that I owned and more. What joy!

The song, Amazing Grace, has two lines about this discovery. One is, “I once was lost but now am found” in the sense that grace found me. The second line is, “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.”

Grace appears. It is discovered treasure, not an hour-by-hour earned reward. Part of the joy and even the value of it is the surprise by which it is found, and the marvelous realization that when I found it, I realized that God had found me.