Something from Max Lucado to start our day:

LET GRACE HAPPEN

"I became a Christian about the same time I became a Boy Scout and I made the assumption that God grades like the Boy Scout's do.....on a merit system. Good scouts move up. Good people go to heaven.

So, I worked toward the day when God, amid falling confetti and dancing cherubim, would drape my badge-laden sash across my chest and welcome me into his eternal kingdom where I would humbly display my badges for eternity.

But some thorny questions surfaced. How many badges does He require? How good is good? Ephesians 2:8 says, 'For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.'

Unearned. A gift. Our merits merit nothing. Let grace happen. Of all the things you must earn in life, God's unending affection is not one of them. You have it!!

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