THIS IS AMAZING GRACE

 APRIL 15, 2022

*****  NOTE    *****

Today you have 2 options for our Devotion. 

OPTION 1: Read the Devotion as presented.

OPTION 2: Scroll to the bottom of the devotion for a Video of Good Friday Reflection with Scriptures, song, and today's  Devotion. The video is a 20 minute long reflection.

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LET'S BEGIN WITH PRAYER


Holy and loving God,
as we prepare to set aside our busyness
and to focus intently on Jesus’ suffering and death,
we ask for eyes to see all of the amazing things that Jesus’ death means for understanding you, your love, and our salvation.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.


John 19:17-18


17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the

Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.





“They crucified him…” these three words are the climax of the earthly life of Jesus. They are the climax of an amazing love story, the story of God coming among us to save, to rescue, to provide a new and living way.



The Gospels tell us that Jesus spoke seven very meaningful words from the cross - seven times he expressed words that grew out of the depth of his soul; seven times he spoke words of compassion and concern, forgiveness and commitment.



Here’s what he said that day:



• Father forgive them for they know not what they do

• Today you will be with me in paradise

• Mother, your son; son, your mother

• My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

• I thirst

• It is finished!

• Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.

Yet in reality I believe Jesus said even more much more than these amazing words could say. He spoke something to the world, to all humankind, without using another word. It is what we read between
the lines, so to speak, it is what we feel, even through the mocking of the bystanders and the weeping of his Mother and friends, we sense this hushed wordless message.


Even though darkness covered the earth at the time of his death, the darkness was punctured with a ray of light.


And the light made an announcement! What is it that Jesus said without saying another word? What Jesus was saying without speaking and what we are mindful of this day is grace, amazing grace!


In his book, “What’s so amazing about Grace?” Philip Yancey says: “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more - no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries and divinity schools, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”



In addition to everything else that Good Friday means, it reminds us that God is gracious,  generous, forgiving and inviting.


God is the giver, grace is the gift. And the cross is the price of this costly grace. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Only a wounded God can help us.”

From the cross-God’s grace is whispered for all to hear. Correction, from the cross grace is shouted for all to hear. The death of Jesus set’s God’s grace loose in the world. The unspoken message of the

cross invites us all to believe, to worship, to step into that ray of light that pierces the darkness, and allow our lives to be transformed by grace, bit by bit, moment by moment, to get involved in the life-long process of “being conformed to the likeness of Christ” as Paul wrote  years later. That transformation results in the foundational likeness that Christ came to reveal, the likeness of love.



LET’S PRAY



May the Christ who walks on wounded feet
walk with you on the road.

May the Christ who serves with wounded hands
stretch out your hands to serve.

May the Christ who loves with a wounded heart
open your hearts to love.

May you see the face of Christ in everyone you meet,
and may everyone you meet see the face of Christ in you. Amen.

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