It seems that the times in my life when I feel the most undeserving and the most messed up are often the times when I seem to experience His grace toward me the most. It's almost as if He's showing me the real definition of grace at those moments - that it is favor shown to the undeserving and unworthy - for if He could love me at my lowest when I have nothing to offer, that must be totally unearned love. That must be real grace.
Don Milam writes in his book, The Ancient Language of Eden, that he once experienced God's love for him right in the middle of an empty time in his life when he had drifted out of the ministry. Suddenly one day he felt God's love wash over him out of the blue. He asked God why this should happen now, and felt God reply, "Why not now?" Yes, why not now. We don't have to do anything to get it. We don't have to deserve it. We don't have to be worthy. Isn't that why it's called "grace"? I believe that gentle rain of grace is really falling on us all the time, but it is only in those moments of acute failure and dryness that we can see it for what it really is - totally unearned, totally free acceptance. Any other time we might feel we had somehow earned this favor by our good works or spiritual progress. But we can't feel that way in the gutter. We can't feel deserving when we've fallen in the ditch. And that is precisely when the beauty of grace shines the most! For His acceptance and love reach down to us even then.
Grace is for losers. It's for rejects and failures. It's for the unworthy and the unlovely. Thank God it's for me! It's for everybody, for all the broken lives that He sees as His beautiful creation, His children who have forgotten where their home is, who don't know who their Daddy is. Thank you, God, for grace!
