This Thanksgiving by far I am most thankful for God’s grace.
Why God is willing to reclaim us, to recycle us, is beyond me. Why he just keeps forgiving us, cleaning us up, and calling us his own, I cannot understand.
The Bible tells us he’s like that. “While we were yet sinners” he died for us. That’s how he loves. Not because we’re good, but in spite of the fact that we’re not.
Remember Hosea? The prophet? All he wanted to do was to be a preacher. “O.K.,” God said, “your first assignment is to go marry a prostitute. She’s the blonde that works the boulevard. Her name is Gomer.”
“But, Lord, you don’t understand,” Hosea protested. “I can’t marry a tramp like her. A wife like that would ruin my ministry!”
“No, Hosea. A wife like her will give meaning to your ministry,” God replied.
“I don’t get it,” the prophet moaned.
“That’s all right,” God said. “You will.”
And Hosea did. Time after time Gomer cheated on her husband. And every time God sent the poor preacher to find his wayward wife and bring her home again.
“That’s how I love,” God told Hosea. “My people sin and sin, and sin again. And I just keep bringing them back, forgiving their sins.”
When the kids were born, the color of their hair or the tint of their skin said they weren’t Hosea’s. “Not mine!” he named one of them. “Not loved!” he called another.
Things hit rock bottom when Gomer drifted back into her old profession and wound up sold on a slave block. Hosea was probably glad to see her gone. But God had other ideas. “Go buy her back,” he told the preacher. So Hosea spent his hard-earned shekels to purchase Gomer’s freedom, to bring her home one more time, although he knew she wouldn’t stay there.
“Now you know how I love my people,” God told Hosea. “Now you understand grace.”
A person who hears the story of Hosea and Gomer the first time may yelp, “That’s outlandish!” And it is. Grace, the way God practices it, is always outlandish. It defies logic. And justice. And common sense.
That’s precisely why those of us who have received it are so grateful. That’s why we can’t stop saying “thank you” to the God who loves us most when we are most unlovable.