Where Grace Is Waiting

Have you ever made a mistake?  Not the type where you just buy the wrong milk but one you dwell on.  One that has impacts.  The type where, in the words of the ever passionate biblical King David, your tears become your food at night as they mock you by asking where your God is.  The type where you pour out your cast down soul and beg for relief.  I dive into the poetry of David as his writings put to pen some of my deepest fears, regrets and thoughts, both good and bad.

David was called a man after God’s own heart.  We remember David as defeating Goliath and as a King.  Looking at the Psalms he opens up his heart for all. He had a full life with seasons of rest and prosperity but also despair and distress.  This man after God’s own heart was a murderer, liar and adulterer and while we love to focus on just the “David and Bathsheba” story he also had eight wives and multiple concubines.  He, like all of us, had sinned against God in many ways.  Why then, would he be considered a man after God’s own heart?  He was by no means perfect and it is easy to remember his biggest failures rather than successes. 

David had a deep desire to follow God and in his own words he delighted in God’s law and loved it. He also firsthand knew the consequences of breaking that law, not in just the practical sense but that it lead to the eternal separation from God.  He also knew the grace of God putting his sin away from him.  He knew the depths of repentance and forgiveness and the heights of praise and restoration.  Yes, he failed on a grand scale, but he also had a faith that sought and received the forgiveness offered by God.

I’ve thought of this lately with some of my own recent failures or mistakes.  It is tempting to want to make something right……to try to erase it or do something that allows you to move forward.  Every thought or action is a way to make it right.  Yet it falls short.  I know things can’t be erased but my human side wants to put as much of my own effort towards it as I can.  Even if I hadn’t failed, or even if David hadn’t and our lives were measured by all the successes it still wouldn’t be enough.  We could never be THAT perfect to be in God’s presence.  Sin would still separate us.

As much as David loved God’s law, he loved His grace.  The law without grace would just damn everyone as it shows how to be perfect.  If there was only the law then we would stive to meet it and fall short.  The gospel of grace comes in and far surpasses where own efforts fail as Jesus pays our ransom price from the chains we drown in.

I think of not only David in the Old Testament but of Peter further down the line in the New Testament.

As we approach the Easter season I think of the side story with Peter.  Peter was arguably one of Jesus’ closest friends.  He had his hopes and dreams set on Jesus creating an earthly kingdom and satisfying their physical needs.  God had much bigger plans.

In Jesus’ final hours Peter denied knowing Him.  Not once, or twice, but three times.  Three times the same mistake, the same denial, the same failure.  If that weren’t enough guilt, then Jesus rose and Peter had to stand face to face with the Messiah he had denied. What do you do in this scenario?  What can you do?

John 21 gives us the play by play.

Peter, in his need to do SOMETHING, went fishing.  Fishing was his profession before following Jesus and part of me wonders if he was going back to the thing he knew how to do best.  The known security.  He knew how to fish.  His own human efforts would show something for fishing at least.  Except that they didn’t this time.

 In a twist, he caught nothing.  After using his own effort through the entire night, they came up empty handed.  At daybreak, Jesus was there, standing on the shore.  They did not recognize him and He told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat.  When they did, they pulled up so much fish that they had to pull the nets to shore as they couldn’t get them up on the boat.

 I can’t imagine standing on that boat with Peter when they realized and exclaimed, “It is the Lord!” they saw standing on the shore.  This man was so overwhelmed with emotion that he jumped ship and swam to the shore where grace was waiting for him.  What followed was a conversation I could never imagine having.

 As Peter’s denial of Jesus hung between them, Jesus offered grace, and redemption……and breakfast food. Peter was grieved as Jesus asked him not once, or twice, but three times if he loved him.  The same number of times as he had denied him.  Not only does Jesus offer grace to Peter but charges him with “feeding his sheep”.  He takes a man who has made mistakes clear up to denying him and entrusts him to lead His people.  Not generally the first thing you would do for someone who betrayed you.  You may forgive them, but not put them in a leadership role over what you love most.

I think of these two men centuries apart, David and Peter.  The depths of their mistakes mirror my own yet God still actively pursues and waits with grace.  As much as they may have tried, there was nothing they could do on their own efforts.  They had seasons of life of both failure and prosperity; seasons of distress where God’s grace was recognized as needed more than other times.  They were after God’s own heart in all their messiness.

 I think of where grace is actively waiting….with love, redemption, continually working to cast away our sin with a fresh start….and food.  I think of the words in Psalm 42 with David’s strong language of tears and a cast down soul; yet ends with him stating “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”  How these words can ring true centuries later for Peter, and centuries later for me.