The Grip of Grace
Wednesday (November 19)
The Grip of Grace
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
We don’t like to admit it, or maybe we do like to admit it because then we can use it as an excuse for falling short, but weakness and failure often seem to define our human lives, don’t they? If I look out my back window right now at my garden area, I see that I failed to keep the summer weeds out. If I look a little closer at the patch where I tried to grow tomatoes for the first time, I recall how I failed to keep the bugs from eating every last one of them. If I walk through the back yard, down the street, and open my mailbox, I’ll be met with the uncomfortable reminder that I failed to pay some important medical bill. And that’s just me thinking off the top of my head. In fact, my goal when I set out to work today was to finish editing five devotionals in hopes of making the monthly deadline, but this is only the third and my workday is almost over. Still, that doesn’t even account for how many times I’ve ignored the needs of my neighbors or rolled my eyes at the slow drivers or harbored angry thoughts toward my brothers and sisters. Listen, friend: I’m not trying to be cynical for the sake of it, but I bet that if you look around your own house or your own yard or your own pile of mail or your own email inbox, you’ll find a thousand little niggling things that you either didn’t do to completion or you’ve failed to even begin.
Yet, that’s why the gospel is such great news, isn’t it? Because it means that you and me both woke up this morning not defined by our shortcomings but by God’s superlative success! We might not get through all the duties of today and heave a sigh of perfect finality, “It is finished,” but He did! And in the success of His toil, in the awesome triumph of His travail, we are accepted and loved and upheld from day to day. So, take comfort from Psalm 73:26. The strength of your life is not in your hands, but in the hands that hold you fast.