Depths and Richness of Grace

Life here in Philly is going well... the Lord continues to amaze us and bless us everyday. This past weekend Anna and I took a last minute trip with some friends ours to their uncle's cabin in the mountains here in Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful place that we have been to a few times over the years and like every other time we have gone it was great. We spent the weekend catching up with our friends who we haven't spent time with in a while, had a fire going the whole weekend, and really just had a fun with our friends. I especially liked the part of the weekend where I was able to show my manliness by chopping wood as well as showing the kid in me by running around with my buddy getting all dirty and exhausted at the same time. It was a wonderful surprise to our weekend, one that I know the Lord blessed us with.
I have been learning a lot about God's grace lately. Last week a guy came to the door at Cast Your Cares while the food cupboard was running, he wanted to sign up to get some food from us as well as talk about life. It was a guy that I have known for a while but haven't seen in a few months. He caught me up on what was going on in his life and the things that were weighing him down. I tired to encourage him the best that I could, with some guidance and God's truth. I felt like we kind of got some where in our talk but as he left I couldn't help but feel for the guy, thinking to myself "if he only understood the grace God has for him in his life things would be so different for him." Later that day after I got home I was listening to some music by Shane and Shane, the song Saved by Grace in particularly. As I listened to the song, a song I have heard a hundred times before, the words "we have been saved by grace" rang over and over in my ears. I began to see the very thing that I was hoping for that guy earlier to understand, I fail to understand at times in my life. I think at times we get stuck on auto pilot and began to try to do things solely on our own, most of the time not even meaning to. Grace is a very hard concept to understand sometimes because we think we need to fix whatever problem is in our lives. We even do it with our relationship with Jesus, we say I need to fix this or do this but the truth is "that God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace we have been saved, through faith- and this is not from ourselves, it is a gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast" . The words in those verses in Ephesians 2 show that we don't have to do things all on our own and that God graciousness is completely free. The depths and richness of His grace I will continue to learn and for that I am excited as well as thankful.