Amazing

Grace...what an amazing word. Wrapped up in that one word is the hope for all of us to have life--abundant life, eternal life. And that's hard for some of us to comprehend. You see, we all know where we've been. We all know what we've been.

Many of us were like the little boy who was always at the wrong place at the wrong time. He had been born into what many of us call a poor family environment, and he quickly became a product of that environment. While other kids learned to read, he learned how to cheat. While they learned a trade, he learned how to steal--just a common criminal lifestyle, always at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And this lifestyle followed him through childhood, adolescence, and on into adulthood. Eventually it caught up with him. He was caught in the act, again.

Wrong place, wrong time, again.

But this time his crime would carry the death penalty.

It should have been an ordinary execution, really, outside the walls of the city. But it wasn't, because that day another man being executed, or crucified on the middle cross, was no ordinary man. And this man named Jesus looked at this young, wrong place, wrong time thief next to Him and He said, "Today son, you can go with Me to Paradise."

And for the first time in that boy's life, when it mattered most, he in the right place at the right time.

You see, because of grace, it doesn't matter to Him how many wrong places you've been, or how many times. He welcomes whosoever will. And what happens to a life that encounters His grace is nothing short of amazing.

From the Easter musical Amazing Grace, created by Sue C. Smith and Russell Mauldin, published by Brentwood-Benson Music, 2005