God's Immeasurable Riches

Today, in Ephesians 2:1-10, we are blessed with another one of St. Paul’s messages of God’s awesome generosity, mercy and love.  Bluntly, St. Paul tells the followers of Christ, that is, each one of us: “You, [Dorothy Ann,] were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived following the age of this world,… the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient.”  [Dorothy Ann] you “…once lived among them in the desires of [your]flesh [and of your ego], following the wishes of the flesh [and of your ego] and [your] impulses, were by nature [a child] of wrath, like the rest.” 

St. Paul puts it on the line, so to speak.  Nothing in that passage is something of which to be boastful or proud. Without redemption, you and I were a mess and in deep trouble, resistant to following the will of God and cooperating with grace. No way, however, would God allow you or me, masterpieces of His hand, His possessions, to perish, to remain “dead.”  No, says St. Paul. “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus….[Y]ou have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works,…For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

How awesome! We live on this earth doing good that God has prepared for us do to ahead of time: everything we need to live a good life has been secured for us by a loving, caring, faithful God! Why has God done this? So that “he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Today, Lord, may my eyes, and yours, be opened to the “immeasurable riches” of God’s grace bestowed upon me “in Christ Jesus” and may I not choose death by following “the age of this world,…the [evil] spirit that is…[always] at work in the disobedient”:  the arrogant, the deceitful, the corrupt, the greedy, the unjust, the proud, the abusive  persons of our societies. And, Lord, when I do fall into Satan’s snares, may I recognize and acknowledge my failures, my sinful ways, and come to you and those I offended, asking for pardon and forgiveness.