Grace and Peace

In recent correspondence from a friend in Iraq, I read the undertones of deep frustration with sin and guilt. He demanded to know what he should do, only to answer his own inquiry with the gospel. How much worse, then, to know the answer but be unable to use it or somehow "turn it on." I have frequently found myself in the same impotent position. I tell God and others how wrong I am and how miserable--I reproach myself with the gospel--but joy continues to elude me. As I read my friend's letter, the odd thought struck me that the very fact that I have no joy is what robs me of joy. "It's all so clear!" I cry, "why is it not so with me?" The presence of this grief in my life has led me to notice a particular phrase that appears often in the gospels: "grace and peace."
Almost every epistle in the New Testament begins with the same blessing/greeting.

Romans 1:7 "To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
I Corinthians 1:1-4 "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
II Corinthians 1:2 "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Galatians 1:3 "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ"
Ephesians 1:2 "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Okay, stop there. Don't just read that one verse. Begin in each and every book and read until you hit the verse where you are told, "grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." When I do this, I sometimes can't help but keep going--what comes next is amazingly good news. Try Ephesians; you'll have to read the whole first chapter before Paul exhortation to us rises into a doxology to God! Here indeed are rich promises to light a dark and troubled heart. Grace and peace. Predestined to glory according to His eternal purpose. Hope, wisdom, glory, power. Every promise better than the last. Every promise is better... Every promise. I just took the crucial step. What my friend and I lack is faith. Reading and reviewing these Scriptures revives that tiny spark of faith within me and what what outside my reach becomes reality.
Try it. Start in Romans and read about your God. Read Philippians and Colossians and the Thessalonian epistles all the way up through Jude. See if His brows are furrowed on account of your sin! Is he not rather like the God of Christmas present?

pax et amor
-Radman

Rifle Range

“...Happy is the man who only has the mind, and has the spirit to get these lessons from nature. Flowers, what are they? They are the thoughts of God solidified, God's beautiful thoughts put into shape. Storms, what are they? They are God's terrible thoughts written out that we may read them. Thunders, what are they? They are God's powerful emotions, just opened out that men may hear them. The world is just the materializing of God's thoughts; for the world is a thought in God's eye. He made it first from a thought that came from his own mighty mind; and every thing in the majestic temple that he has made has a meaning.
In this temple there are four evangelists. As we have four great evangelists in the Bible, so there are four evangelists in nature; and these are the four evangelists of the seasons—spring, summer, autumn, winter.
First comes spring, and what says it? We look, and we behold that, by the magic touch of spring, insects which seemed to be dead begin to awaken, and seeds that were buried in the dust begin to lift up their radiant forms. What says spring? It utters its voice—it says to man, Though thou sleepest thou shalt rise again; there is a world in which in a more glorious state thou shalt exist; thou art but a seed now, and thou shalt be buried in the dust, and in a little while thou shalt arise. Spring utters that part of its evangile. Then comes summer. Summer says to man, Behold the goodness of a merciful Creator--“he makes his sun to shine on the evil and on the good,” he sprinkleth the earth with flowers, he scattereth it with those gems of creation, he maketh it a blossom like Eden, and bring forth like the garden of the Lord. Summer utters that; then comes autumn. We shall hear its message this morning. It passes—and fourth—comes winter crowned with a coronal of ice, and it tells us that there are times of trouble for man; it points to the fruits that we have stored up in qutumn, and it says to us, Man, take heed that thou store up something for thyself—something against the day of wrath; lay up for thyself the fruits of autumn, that thou mayest be able to feed on them in winter. And when the old year expires, its death-knell tells us that man must die; and when the year has finished its evangelistic mission, there comes another to preach the same lesson again.”
-Spurgeon, "Sermon XV--Harvest Time"