Identity and Scripture | Columnist Forum Vol 32 No 1
Vickie Hodges
There are gifts that we have access to during every single moment of every day. These gifts are none other than love, mercy, and grace. We can gain a comprehensive understanding of these gifts when we extend love, mercy, and grace to others as well as accept them from others. We must strive to be fully engaged with these gifts at all times.
A unique way to keep these attributes/gifts of Christ alive and working in us is by remembering the Golden Rule—-“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’
Quite often we may find ourselves in situations that we did not mean to get into. We feel embarrassment, regret, and remorse. We can see how we made a wrong turn and how we may have thought we were in the right, but wound up entirely in the wrong. The greatest gifts anyone could extend to me during these humiliating times of adverse circumstances is to extend their love, grace, and mercy toward me. What I remember most about these times is NOT the embarrassment or humiliation, but rather the love, mercy, and grace extended to me through forgiveness from others.
When we’ve experienced this firsthand, it should make it so easy for us to show forgiveness toward others by reaching out to them with the same gifts of love, mercy, and grace that have been given to us. Jesus’ very life was a life lived with these gifts in full action.
Through life’s moments of joy and through adverse circumstances we can know that love, mercy, and grace travel with us, in us, and through us. These are gifts that work intrinsically in every born-again child of God. So go on! Enjoy every season while traveling this journey of life. You’ve got all the gifts you will ever need!
