Last Sunday, I continued my sermon series based on the Four Alls, a journey through God’s grace and what it means for all of us.
On the first Sunday, we reflected on “We All Need Grace.” Yesterday, the message was “Grace Is for All.”
I connected it with our experience at camp with Bella, my dog. She absolutely loved the river. At home, she has a little plastic pool, but the river was different. She felt like she was in heaven. The pool has limits; the river keeps flowing.
Sometimes we do the same thing with grace. We create our own little “pools” and decide who deserves grace, who belongs, who is forgiven, and who is welcome. But John 3:16 reminds us that God so loved the world.
I also reflected on the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a river flowing from the temple, the water that kept getting deeper: ankle-deep, knee-deep, up to the waist, until it became deep enough to swim in and dive into. God was inviting Ezekiel to go deeper.
What a beautiful picture of grace. We don’t have to create the river. We don’t have to control it. We are simply invited to step into it, and go deeper.
Grace is bigger than our boundaries, our judgments, and our categories. Grace is not a little plastic pool. Grace is a river. And the river is already flowing.
Maybe the invitation is to stop standing on the shore and get in.
Rev. Marvel Souza
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