Grace, Peace and Thanks

IS-Walters-11-23-10
Spirituality Column #211
November 23, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Grace, Peace and Thanks
By Bob Walters

“Please” and “Thank you,” we learn early in life, are “the magic words.” They help us create positive relationships with each other.

“Grace and Peace,” we learn in the Biblical letters of St. Paul, are the magic words of the Christian life. They help us understand our loving and eternal relationship with God.

Each of Paul’s 13 letters in the New Testament contain some version of the greeting “Grace and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Though occasionally dismissed as a routine greeting, “Grace and Peace” is loaded with meaning following the earthly arrival, life, teaching, passion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Grace is Christ at work. It is God restoring us in a way no one would have thought to ask for, with the humble, loving servant Jesus – God incarnate – beating back death and erasing our sin. It is not a gift we can repay. It is not a gift we are somehow “charged” for. It wasn’t negotiated. It is not a transaction or trade. Grace is the love of God delivered through the work of Christ.

It is “the grace of God in all its truth” (Colossians 1:6).

Peace is our life in the risen person of Christ, not our life thinking about Christ or reading the Bible or going to church or “being a good person.”

It’s easy to get this one confused because we plainly see the world’s mayhem, chaos, evil, inequity, tragedy, disease and disaster. Let’s be clear: Satan is the engineer of the bad and eschews peace because he is against God.

Jesus Christ “himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), because He is God.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week let’s note that in the Bible thanks is almost always directed at God. Let’s also note that faith, hope, love, truth, salvation and mercy – the Good News of the Gospel – are centered in Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving is a public holiday but grounded in the Christian faith. The persecuted Puritans in Great Britain arrived in America on the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620. A year of hard survival later they celebrated a bountiful harvest by thanking God. Abe Lincoln made Thanksgiving official in 1863.

While there are lots of ways to tell our historical Thanksgiving story, it is God’s grace and peace that enable loving relationships and compose the true spirit of thanksgiving.

Please remember to thank Him.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends Colossians 1 for a prayerful Thanksgiving Day devotion and reflection.