For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

Romans 3:23-24

Typically, I don’t have any trouble coming up with a direction when it comes to writing these daily posts. There is usually enough going on in our lives that something is begging for some kind of commentary.

But today is one of those where I’d be chewing on the end of my pencil – if I had one – wondering where to start. Most blog hosting sites offer “writing prompts” and WordPress is no exception; but my “go-to” is the Bible and typically I let the BibleGateway.com supply the passage for my inspiration.

Hence the selection from Romans, today’s “verse of the day.” It serves as a most excellent “week following Easter” text and well worth thinking/writing/talking about.

I was immediately taken with the NLT’s translation of the familiar words (“God’s glory”) to “God’s glorious standard.” It reminds me that I was not created in a random way but that God had/has so much for me in terms of hope and promise and expectation, such an investment of love.

Like our own children. Good grief how Rebekah and I talked and dreamed and peered into the future when Andrew and then Naomi were infants!

We, of course, are fallible, and inconsistent, and limited in terms of imagination, and saddled with narrow vision. We are rooted in the status quo and hobbled by our own expectations. God, on the other hand, gifted our children with so much more possibility than the ideas we had, and over the years they both broke free from our plan and all we could do was to stand aside and watch – amazed, stunned, and frightened sometimes – as they became more who God purposed and made their own way into and for the world.

over the years they both broke free from our plan and all we could do was to stand aside and watch – amazed, stunned, and frightened sometimes – as they became more who God purposed and made their own way into the world.

And so God watches me, watches you, and it is not our parents’ hopes and dreams but “God’s glorious standard” that counts.

And so of course I need Jesus; our children do too. We all need that grace that makes us “right in [God’s] sight.”

Easter is our reference point in this regard, because it was through victory over death that Jesus “freed us from the penalty for our sins.“

It’s a good thing that I am still young enough to continue to grow, and to fall short, and to trust Jesus, and to be made right in God’s sight.

In love, and because love has achieved this – DEREK