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Glorious Grace


to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:6)
                Can you imagine inglorious grace? Is there such a thing as plain grace that somehow ranks lower than glorious grace? I suppose that there might be what we would call “common grace,” meaning grace that is given to everyone, like sunlight or oxygen. Wouldn’t glorious grace have to be better than that? 
                Better than normal? Ah yes, sunlight and oxygen are normal, but can you imagine life without them? For someone who is in need of light or air, they are probably pretty glorious. But let’s turn that around a little. What could we say about something that goes beyond making it possible for us to live? One of my Sunday School teachers described kindness as bread and lovingkindness as bread covered with lots of your favorite jam on it. How can we begin to compare common grace to glorious grace? It’s not comparing just bread with bread and jam, it’s comparing dirt to a steak dinner with cheesecake for dessert.
                And it is the full-dinner grace that has been given to us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think about things like this enough.

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