Being out of town always messes with what I am doing when I come back - here is today's devotional reflection that continues with William Willimon's stuff.

Does affirmation of the ultimate triumph of God in Jesus Christ, and the possibility that all might be saved, mean that human beings are rendered irresponsible, that grace is ultimately irresistible? Our salvation is a gift, and yet it is a gift that is offered along with God's gift of human freedom. If God loves us in freedom, then the very nature of grace entails the possibility of refusal and rejection. If Grace is automatic or assumed, it tends to be neither gracious nor grace. John Wesley (along with Paul) taught that even our receptivity to the gift of grace is also a sign of the working of grace.

If "our receptivity to the gift of grace is also a sign of the working of grace," then it is the work of God for us. It is not our own receptivity. We are claimed...pulled...coaxed...and always within the embrace of this God who is gracious - forever gracious. In the middle of this Reigning grace, we still have that human capacity to say "no." We have that freedom to do as we will and to run away and to attempt to make the world in our own image. In and through all that freedom, God waits alongside us continuing to let us see signs of grace and new life so that by the power of God's Spirit, we will be overcome by this God who will not let us go even when we try so hard to move away and start another story for ourselves. When we talk like this, I think we continue to open up our hearts to more than we are able to absorb. That is good. That is also a taste of the feast that is to come. Always - beyond where we are - there is another taste we have yet to experience. Therefore we are drawn more deeply into the wonder and life of God's grace.

Connection: Some days it is a good reminder to hear about our God's never-ending grace. Some days can give us too much evidence of how far we are walking from the life within God's Reign. And yet...that Reign is always at hand and utterly available.

We count on your grace, O God. It is too easy to go our own way and think that we have all things in control and as we would like them. But then we are given the opportunity to hear and see how your grace transforms life all around us. It is then that we too, being pulled by your Spirit, enter again in to the ways of your gracious Reign. Amen.