Our pastor has been slowly working his way through Romans on Sunday mornings. I'm almost 60 years old and have been listening to sermons most of my life, but I have never been privileged to hear such preaching and I am learning truths I should have learned decades ago.

The grace that God pours down on us, abundantly and persistantly, is made clear in the book of Romans. I have heard it said that if you can grasp the doctrines of Paul's letter to the Roman church then you will have a good understanding of God's working with mankind. I believe that is true.

I have run across so many Christians in my life that seem to be quite graceless. They are often condemnatory, accusatory and unloving. I wonder why that is. God has chosen to love His children with complete abandon and yet His children turn around and treat their brothers and sisters as lepers.

I have often jested after hearing another story of Christians treating other Christians with disregard that "they will know we are Christians by our LOVE?" It ought to be true, but, sadly, it often isn't.

I do not want to be like that. I want grace to pour out from me and spill all over everyone I come in contact with. I can trust God to fill me to overflowing with HIS grace so that I can live a life of quiet gentleness and love. It's not going to be easy, because I have often been a very hard-hearted person, but the older I get, the more I absorb Christ's teaching the more likely I am to weep than to accuse.

It's a strange change for me. I have found myself weeping over the death of Mrs. Bhutto. Why? Because I can imagine, only faintly, her eternal destination. Even for whom we would consider the most deserving (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and their ilk) it still ought to make us weep to think that they must now abandon all hope, that they will be forever seperated from God.  We cannot even imagine such seperation, can we?

So for the new year I hope to continue my journey toward the development of oozing grace. Grace that flows from a heart filled with God's Spirit, open to whatever He has for me. I am grateful to our pastor and to the Apostle Paul for the lessons of Romans.

Grace to you.