grace-us sakes!

"and I will pour out a spirit of grace..." (zechariah 12:10, nlt).

the other morning i woke with an expression running through my head...grace us with Your presence...

it was sunday when i had this thought. on facebook and twitter i was getting people's updates about being excited to go to church, people happy it was sunday, people looking forward to the day, and so on. in church circles, people often quote verses about being glad to go into the house of the Lord, about one day with the Lord being better than a thousand elsewhere, etc., and songs get sung at the start of service inviting God to meet with us, like "welcome into this place." when we pray in a service, we invite God's presence to fill and saturate and inundate the building and our being.

in effect, we're asking God to grace us with His presence. now, make no mistake, He needs no invitation since He's everywhere present and nowhere absent, but in our limited way of expressing ourselves, we ask God to honour us with His presence...which He does...over and over again...gracious sakes, He's generous with His grace :-)

but this figure of speech struck me in a more profound way this morning, because really, it's what God does over and over again...He literally graces us with His presence. not just gracing us with His presence by merely and predictably showing up in a service or when we need Him, but by making grace available to us.

the way i see it, it's like He stands with a big bucket full of grace and it washes over us time and time again. time and time again He gives us what we don't deserve. the bible says "He gives more grace" (james 4:6). He actually graces us when we meet with Him! think about it. He applies His grace to our lives like a covering...not so that we can keep doing the same stupid things over and over again and expect to be forgiven, thereby taking His grace for granted and abusing it, but so that we'll be kept from doing the same things over and over again, all the while knowing that if we slip, He'll be there to catch us. so, while His grace is provided to us and poured out on us--just to be clear--it's not provisional in that it's a license to do whatever we want.

there's a song--which i could have googled to verify and to ensure accuracy, because c'mon, of course the internet is accurate :-)--but the verse ends with "grace flows down and covers me." it's title might even be "grace flows down," i think. and that's the point. grace flows down and covers. and one more time i'm graced by His presence.