Strange Things

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. -Jeremiah 33:3

When Jesus pronounced forgiveness to the lame man set before him, the onlooking crowd thought it strange, not to say blasphemous.

Knowing the thoughts of their unbelieving hearts, he bade the man to rise up and walk. And the crowd was amazed and pronounced it strange even while praising God.

Isn't it so, in our own lives, that we often thank and praise God while being amazed at the sometime strangeness of His ways?

And to meditate how He has worked to accomplish His plan of redemption.

How a young man, who stole fruit, not because he was hungry, but for the pure deviltry of it, should become the greatest theologian of the early church and chief proponent of the doctrine of grace.

How an obscure German monk with strong doubts about his own salvation should embrace that same doctrine of grace and find the courage to face down the combined might of Church and Empire, thus sparking a mighty reformation.

How an English preacher should cross the Atlantic Ocean to proclaim those same doctrines of grace and awake an entire nation to God's grace and mercy.

Many are the strange personal accounts we could give of God's mysterious workings in our own lives to grant us faith and mercy. What an unlikely candidate for God's grace I find myself to be.

Strangest of all, and at the heart of the message of grace, is the account of how God took on flesh and became the Word, to live in perfect obedience, to die sacrificially, to rise miraculously, and to ascend in glorious power, from whence He will return in judgment and make all things new.

Strange indeed.

Happy birthday to me, and God bless us, everyone.