like me.

This week at Ridge Point we began our teaching through the prayers of Christmas. Also known as the songs of Christmas. We began with Elizabeth, who after becoming pregnant with John said, "The Lord has done this for me, In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people." Elizabeth recognized the grace of God in her midst. She knew her value as a woman in the image of God with His breath in her nostrils.

Often when we speak of the grace of God we want it to be for us. We have a highly individualized picture of grace. As a result our thoughts drift toward grace being for people like us. Grace is for people who think like us, look like us, speak our language, share our religion, have similar political views and/or live in our neighborhoods. The reality is that God's grace is for all of us for all time.

Philip Yancey defines grace in his book What's So Amazing About Grace? as follows: Grace is the idea that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. This is what God has expressed to men and women since he visited Adam and Eve in the garden.

When we sing: Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch, LIKE ME ... We are faced with the reality that we are merely wretches. More than that all men and women who have ever lived have had that same grace extended to them. We concluded our gathering together singing Amazing Grace and seeing at images that were all titled "like me."

I have included some of those pictures in this blog, we had more than thirty five during our time together. Some of those included in the images were Johnny Cash, Adolf Hitler, Kurt Cobain, and Martin Luther King Jr. We had photos of a little blond-haired girl, a young Hispanic boy and African children. There were pictures of Jews, Christians and Muslims. There were pictures of American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents ... Republican and Democrat. All of us are people to whom grace has been extended.

The beauty of this message is that the Church, His Body, are the ones called to be the conduits of his grace in our world. So as we sang the old hymn we all had a new spirit in our hearts as we did. A friend of mine said, "I love the 'like me.' thing." I smiled and said, "Yeah, we should make it a t-shirt." We then looked at each other, and knew that we should do just that.

To learn more please go to the like me store.