God's Grace

Today we’re thinking in our service about God’s grace. We are fortunate enough to live in a very beautiful country, and here in Llandrindod I think we are in a particularly special place surrounded by incredible beauty right in the heart of Wales. One of the features of the countryside around here is the mountains. Mountains can make wonderful views, but in some ways those mountains can also act as a barrier preventing people from looking out further.

And in our lives we can tend to put up barriers which prevent us from having a clear vision. We can become bogged down in doing the everyday things, restricted by the busy-ness of what is happening, and when we do this we run the risk of missing the vision of God’s grace. Grace, by its very nature, is undeserved. It is a gift of God that is free to us.

And it is there for us all and we are invited to come andexperience this grace in the reading from the prophet Isaiah.We are to come – it says all who are thirsty and who have no money – come, buy and eat. We are to come and accept the gifts of God – to accept his grace, his love, his mercy, and find refreshment and renewal in his care.

The reading goes on to say that we are also invited to ‘buy’. It’s language we can all understand – living in a consumer society we are used to paying for things, except for this gift there is no charge – we buy it for nothing ! We are not just to come but we are to accept our free gift, to move beyond the passive and to take out our gift to transform our lives.

And the language of the reading describes this as eating – in other words we are to be doers. We are not to look at the gifts of God and admire them from afar. We are not just to take them and keep them for ourselves, but we are to enjoy them and to use them in our own lives, and to seek to glorify God in all we do.

The apostle Paul was a great example of a man who came and bought and ate from God – he came without even planning to. As he persecuted Christians his life was dramatically transformed as God himself spoke to him. It was an invitation to come – albeit rather more dramatic than most people might have received !

And he bought – he knew straight away that this was a gift that couldn’t be ignored or refused. He would accept this free gift, and he would begin a journey of transformation in his life and in the life of so many others. And that transformation took place as he ate and was nourished by the gifts of God. He was empowered to go out and preach the gospel message – a message of peace, hope and love for all to enjoy.

But Paul wasn’t an obvious candidate… Going back to school days we occasionally used to talk amongst friends of what we hoped to do when we got older – lots of different careers were mentioned. Some people obviously seemed to fit easily into the jobs they wanted to do – there was the debating champion who wanted to be a barrister, there were people who wanted to join the police force, or become nurses or doctors and many other careers too.

Well Paul didn’t seem to fit any category that would suggest him to be the greatest missionary the church has ever known – his persecution of Christians was fierce and determined and even after his conversion it seems people may well have been a bit suspicious of him at first. And as his ministry progressed even then he didn’t become perfect – in our reading we heard of the thorn in his flesh. We don’t know what it was, but there was something that was not quite right.

But that weakness meant God had to be Paul’s strength. And he has to be ours too. None of us can get by on our own – we need all kinds of things and people. We need food and drink, we need people to love and to be loved by… and we need God.

Returning to those mountains we thought of earlier – They can look pretty formidable at times, but they can also look beautiful – and God is inviting us to come and to continue our life’s journey heading up the mountain – not afraid of them, not seeing them as a barrier, but heading upwards and ever closer to God.

In our life we will face barriers that look formidable, we will face struggles and hardships. We will sometimes even see the future as surrounded by barriers hiding the way forward, but God invites us to trust him – to come, buy, eat and enjoy all the wonderful gifts that he has prepared for us. AMEN