God's masterpiece of Grace
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RECAP OF EPHESIANS CHAPTER 1
Ephesians 1:1-14 Our Calling is from Eternity to Eternity: Most people are too focused on this one piece of eternity and miss the greater inheritance we have been called to from eternity past to eternity present.
Ephesians 1:15-23 All things are being put under His feet and are in submission the immeasurable riches of His glory. We try to control the things in our life like throwing the tennis ball in the air. However, do we truly control anything at all or is it all about the fullness of His glory that is all in all or is it the complete dominion and glory of God alone.
We concluded last week with Paul’s prayer that the inward eyes of readers might be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to know the implications of God’s call to them, that the wealth of his inheritance which awaits them in heaven.
The sequence of events is clear: ‘Jesus Christ was dead, but God raised and exalted him. And you also were dead, but God raised and exalted you with Christ.
I wonder if any culture in human history has ever been more depressed about the human predicament than they are today. Of course every age has been in bondage to a blurred image or vision of its own problems, because it is too close to them to get them into focus.
Every generation has bread its prophets of doom and gloom. However, the media enables us to grasp the worldwide extent of evil in the world today, and it is that which makes the world look so dark today.
We see this exploited in economic problems (population growth, inflation, unemployment, hunger, the spoiling of natural resources), partly the spread of social conflict (disintegration of family life) and partly the absence of accepted moral guidelines (leading to violence, dishonesty and sexual promiscuity). Man has become the God of his own world and incapable of managing his own affairs or of creating a just, free, humane and tranquil society.
Paul begins in our text this morning plumbing out the depth of pessimism about man, and then rises to the heights of optimism about God. Paul now paints a vivid contrast between what man is by nature and what he can become by Grace.
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Why we need to be Born Again?
Jesus said this in John 3:7
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
And Jesus again said in John 3:3
3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Being born again is infinitely serious business. Heaven and Hell are hanging in the balance. We will not see the kingdom of God unless we are born again. The question is Why? Why is it so necessary? Why will some other remedy not work, like turning over a new leave or moral self-improvement or self-discipleship?
This is why the all important radically spiritual, supernatural thing called new birth or regeneration is so important.
In Honest Moments of our Life all of us know what needy people we are.
Sin Is the Ultimate Problem
The root of the human problem is the dynamic disease of sin operating within the soul and manifesting itself. We look at the dreadful things other people do and excuse ourselves. Human beings are not unlike volcanoes. Inside a volcano, the pressure builds until the top blows with a dramatic eruption of lava. At other times, cracks slowly and insidiously appear on the side of the volcano, and the lava flows out in a different manner.
So it is with human beings. We can never say that the circumstances in which a young person's character was formed did not have some impact on the way that he behaves. But inside each of us, there's a thing called sin. No matter what way our volcano was formed, whether we blow the top or leak streams of lava, it's the lava inside that's the problem. The ultimate disease is the problem, and there's nothing human beings can do about it.
First, we must look at the Diagnoses of the Human Condition.
1. Man By Nature, or by Human Condition
1. Man By Nature, or by Human Condition
(Write the Word Nature)
Who can know the Human Heart?
We know that according to Jeremiah 17:9 that “the heart is deceitful above all else, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” David said in Psalm 19:12, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
Basically we never get to the bottom of our sinfulness. No one truly knows the extend or depth of their own sinfulness.
Even though we may not know truly how sinful we are the Bible does not leave us without clues as to how deep our sinfulness runs. The Bible has a clear and devastating message for the state of our human soul. And it does show us the depravity of our sinfulness so that we will know what we need and shout for joy when God gives it to us.
C.S. Lewis captures the language of the curse in his book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when he describes Narnia as once being a place of vibrant colors and warmth. However, since the White Witch cursed the land, it is now always winter. Through the high fantasy of a mythical world, Lewis was emphasizing the reality of the effects of sin on the natural world.
Diagnosis:
We were Dead
We were Dead
(write the word Dead)
The trouble with humanity is not that we are merely out of harmony with our environment and with other people. We are alienated from a life with God’ (4:18), that is, with respect to our true spiritual nature that we are dead through “trespasses and sins.”
And “you were dead” referring to the Gentile readers and now “Among whom we all” now referring to both Jews and Gentiles
What is the Condition?
You are DEAD, you walked according the nature of this world, under the power of Satan, the prince and power of the air, you are now under the influence of living in disobedience.
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
Can the Spiritually dead Please God?
Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
1 Kings 8:46 “There is no one who does not sin.”
Psalm 143:2 “No one living is righteous before you.
1 John 1:8 “If we say we have not sin, we deceive ourselves.”
How are we dead? We are dead in the trespasses of our sins.
What is a Trespass?
A trespass (‘paraptoma) is a false step, involving either the crossing of a known boundary or a deviation from the right path.
A ‘sin’ (hamartia) however, means a missing of the mark, a falling short of a standard. Together the two words cover the positive and negative, or are both rebels and failures.
Basically there is no essential difference between these two nouns: the root meaning of missing the mark or slipping, or falling from the way, and both express the failure of people to live as they could and should.
We were made in God’s image to live as children of his family, aware of his presence, to rejoice in his direction for our lives. Freedom was given, however, with it came the warning of the possibility of disobedience, and that disobedience would lead to death. (Gen. 2:17). The death that mankind experiences is not in the physical aspect of death but in the spiritual part of our death.
PROBLEM OF DEADNESS IN OUR CURRENT CULTURE
The biblical statement about ‘deadness’ of non-Christian people raises great problems for many because it doe not square with the current everyday experience of humanity. Lot’s of people who make know profession of Christ in their lives whatsoever, who even openly refute Jesus Christ, appear to be very much alive.
Some have the incredible body of an athlete, while others have the keen mind of a scholar, or yet others might have the personality of a film star. If you were to ask these people if they felt dead they would answer no, arguing that they feel very much alive.
In reality in the sphere that matters, not that of the body or the mind, but the living soul of a person without Christ’s regeneration of the soul they are very much dead men and women walking.
They have nothing in their spirit and soul which cries out Abba Father. They are Blind to the glory of Jesus Christ, and deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit. They have no love for God, no sensitivity or awareness of his personal reality and a deep longing for fellowship with his people.
They are unresponsive to him as a corpse. The EKG reading on their live is flat lined as death.
So we should not hesitate to affirm that a life without God is a living death, and that those who live it are dead even while they are living.
Note: To affirm this paradox is to become painfully aware of the basic tragedy of the fallen human existence. It is that people who were created by God for his glory alone should now be living without God. This is our permanent position until the Good shepherd has found us.
We were Enslaved
We were Enslaved
Note: Now Paul fleshes this out even further by describing the extent of our sinfulness and former behavior and lifestyle. By a ‘Lifestyle’ (ESV) of sinful behavior. Paul also uses the word at the beginning of v.2 ‘Walked’ which in western mindset gives a picture of a leisurely stroll down the promenade in the countryside taking in the beauties of the surroundings.
Paul is giving a very different picture here showing that there was no true freedom, but rather fearful bondage to forces over which we had not control. What were they? If behind death lies our sin that we are held in captive to then Paul’s answer, when put into ecclesiastical language, is ‘the world, the Flesh and the Devil’
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
There are 3 former influences controlling and directing our pre-Christian existence.
(1) Following the Course of this world.
(write the word World)
The authority is expressed in terms of its power in the world, its spiritual nature, and its activity in human lives. First, the word course or more often ‘age,’ and kosmos translated ‘world,’ are used in the New Testament to contrast the life that humanity lives apart from God, limited by our earthbound motives, in contrast with that life which is lived in acknowledgement of God’s kingship and with the realization of his presence.
Paul is now contrasting according to this age of darkness as opposed to the kingdom of light. We have here a picture of two kingdom theology, or the kingdom of this world as opposed to the Kingdom of God.
‘AGE’ and ‘WORLD’ express a whole society value-system which is alien to God.
It permeates, dominates, and holds people hostage to this world. People seem to not have a mind of their own but to surrender to this world, this culture, and it’s ways and mindset of doing things. This is pictured in Paul’s letter to the Romans 1:28 “And since they did not see fit to honor God as, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
(2) Captivity
(write the word captive)
The captivity that Paul is describing here is that of the prince of the power of the air, or the ruler of the kingdom of the air. The word for ‘air’ could be translated as ‘foggy atmosphere,’ indicating the darkness which the devil prefers to light.
Captive: Something that is captive is kept under control without the ability to move or act freely.
It is unfashionable now days in the church (even while satanism flourishes outside the church) to believe either in a personal devil or in personal demonic intelligences under his command. But there is no obvious reason why the church should direct their theology this way, the plain teaching of Jesus and his Apostles not to mention the early church is that Satan is very real, and his whole aim and desire is to steal, kill, and destroy your life and mine.
‘the spirit that is now at work in the son’s of disobedience.’
Paul is referring to the evil spirits power with control in the natural world but whose presence is not physical but spiritual. We see this spiritual battle referenced in Ephesians 6:12
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Martin Luther
My conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God, and to go against conscience or Scripture is neither right nor safe.
(3) The passions of our Flesh
(Write the word Flesh)
The third influence which holds us in bondage is the passions of our flesh, when Paul speaks of the flesh he means not the living fabric which covers our bony skeleton but our fallen, self-centered human nature. The passions are identified as the desires which consume our body and mind.
There is a distinction made in scripture between passions of the flesh and the sins of the flesh.
First, there is nothing wrong with natural bodily desires, whether for food, sleep or sex. For God has made the human body that way. It is only when the appetite for food becomes gluttony, for sleep laziness and for sex lust, that the natural desires become converted into sinful desires.
Secondly, the passions of the flesh include the wrong desires of the mind as well as the body, such sins as intellectual pride, false ambition, rejection of known truth, and malicious or vengeful thoughts.
We Were Condemned
We Were Condemned
(write the word Condemn)
We were like the rest of humanity, by nature children ‘of wrath’. Meaning under the wrath of God. There is quiet possibly not a statement in Ephesians which has provoked more hostility than this one. Some commentators take little or no attempt to understand, let alone defend, it; they dismiss it as not related today. There are three reasons for the cause of such hostility.
The concern is with the worlds ‘wrath,’ ‘children,’ and ‘by nature’.
First, God’s wrath is not like man’s it is not bad or ill tempered, so that he may fly off the handle at any moment. It is neither spite, nor malice, nor animosity, nor revenge. It is never arbitrary, since it is the divine reaction to only one situation, namely evil.
So what is the wrath of God?
It is God’s personal, righteous constant hostility towards evil, namely sin, and his settled refusal to compromise with it, and his resolve to condemn it and put it to death once and for all.
Note: We must remember that God’s wrath is not incompatible with his love. The contrast between verses 3 and 4 is notable:”We were by nature children of wrath… But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us.”
Now we will look at the Remedy for our Condition.
2. Man By Grace, or by Divine Compassion
2. Man By Grace, or by Divine Compassion
(Write the word Compassion)
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
REMEDY: “God made us Alive”
But God...... The two most significant words in Scripture.
We were dead in sin, BUT GOD made us alive with Christ
We were captive to the prince of the power of the air and enslaved to the course of this world, BUT GOD, raised us with Christ and made us sit with him in the heavenly places.
We were children of wrath and deserving of an eternity in the torments of hell, BUT GOD, instead of pouring out wrath, will spend eternity showing the immeasurable riches of his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Note: Both verse 5 and verse 8 the same assertion is made: By grace you have been saved
Think about this, we were the object of God’s wrath, but God, out of the great love with which he loved us had mercy on us.
We were dead and dead men do not come back to life, but God made us alive in Christ. We were slaves in a position of powerlessness, but God has raised us with Christ and set us at his own right hand, in a position of honor and power.
Therefore, God has taken action to reverse our condition in sin. Christians have been criticized for being morbidly preoccupied with their sin and guilt. The criticism is not fair when we are facing the facts about ourselves (it is never unhealthy to look reality in the face), but only when we fail to go on to glory in God’s mercy and Grace.
It emphasizes the abiding consequences of God’s saving action in the past, as if Paul should say, ‘You are a people who have been saved and remain for ever saved.’
What has God Done?
What has God Done?
*He has Saved Us
*He has Saved Us
3 successive verbs that take up what God did to Christ and then with the prefix together links us with these events.
God made us alive together with Christ.
He raised us up with him.
He made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Jesus Christ.
Fundamentally this is union of God’s people with Christ. What constitutes the distinctness of the members of God’s new society? Not just that they admire and even worship Jesus, not just that they assent to the beliefs of the Church, not even that they live by certain moral standards.
The Distinctive Identity
What makes them distinctive is their new identity as a people who are ‘in Christ.’ By being in Christ means they have actually shared in his resurrection, ascension and position. Think about what it means to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
Here is the problem in our Christian culture today. We live in the naturalistic world and give little thought to the supernatural world that we cannot currently touch or see. I have traveled to many different places and cultures outside of the United states and they would tell you that our Western Culture has de-mystified and lost it’s awe of the supernatural.
*He has Reckoned Us
*He has Reckoned Us
Reckon: To consider or regard in a specified way. Establish by counting or calculation.
(1) Kindness in the place of death
(1) Kindness in the place of death
First, notice what God gives us in the place of his wrath. verse 3 We were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. “By nature we were so rebellious against the law of God that we were suitable objects of his wrath.
Jesus Merciful warning of Hell
Jesus is the one who warned the Church most vividly to cut off your sinning hand rather than go with two hands to hell (Matt. 5:30); that all evildoers will be thrown into a furnace of fire (Matt. 13:42); that the goats on his left hand will go into eternal punishment (Matt. 25:46); that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12).
Again and again he warned that it is appointed unto man to die once and after that comes the Judgement (Heb. 9:37). All of these warnings are not the ranting of a country evangelist. They are all mercy!
God’s Merciful Promise
Following the merciful warning comes the merciful promise in verse 7. For those who trust Christ, God commits himself to the following purpose.
…that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
God’s promise is to spend the “riches of his grace in kindness on us.” And then to assist our faltering hearts and imaginations he adds the word “immeasurable” or “surpassing” or “incomparable” or “Inconceivable.” HOW RICH IS OUR GOD!
(2) Freedom in the Place of Captivity
(2) Freedom in the Place of Captivity
Captive to Satan
We were all in step with the world, at home in the spirit of this age of darkness. The reason for this is that Satan is at work in the sons of disobedience.
There is a personal supernatural reality the prince of the power of the air, and he has easy access to the hearts of the disobedient. So, he easily keeps their behavior under his control and power.
Seated with Christ in Heaven
Now what does this mean? We are all in this room right? You may look like you are in this room, but, your heart, your affections, your ever waking longing is in Heaven with Christ. You are living in a foreign land that is not your home. That is the way it is when we are truly a follower of Christ. Look what it say’s in Colossians 3:3
3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
It is heaven that now holds your affections. It’s heaven that is always pulling you upward toward Him. It’s heaven that governs our tastes. We may look like we are in this world. But the world has not claim on our affections. It is a foreign land. We are exiles and aliens.
Freedom from the Spirit of this Age
Jason Bourne
Remember in the Jason Bourne series, Jason had been brain washed by the government to be a sleeper assassin for the government. Something triggers in Bourne and he wakes up to reality realizing that he has been brainwashed and no longer wants to live under the control of the government who brain washed him.
This is kind of the way it is when we come to Christ.
When we submit our lives to Christ we are free from the spirit of this age and the god of this age which is Satan.
It is as though we had been kidnapped and brainwashed and made to think we were really citizens of the enemy territory. And then the king’s intelligence finds you and shocks you out of your stupor, and you suddenly realize that what the enemy has to offer would never satisfy the deepest longings of your heart. Your heart is now in the homeland. But the king says stay for now, and, though it may be dangerous, live like an alien in love with the homeland, and when you come home, bring as many with you as you can.
(3) Life in the Place of Death
(3) Life in the Place of Death
Notice what God gives in the place of the deadness of sin
According to verse 1 we were dead in the trespasses of our sins. That is, we were spiritually incapable of doing anything to help us out of our sinful state. The corruption of sin was so deep that we had not spiritual inclination at all. We may have been open tombs of immorality, or we may have been whitewashed toms of religiosity. But there was not spiritual good within us.
BUT GOD, when he walked by my open grave, instead of turning away from the stench, he said to his Son, “I want that mess alive. Will you die for him?” And he said yes. And that’s how I got saved. And that is how you got saved - or can be saved.
Why God Did It
Why God Did It
It was the immeasurable riches of God’s grace towards us
For God’s Glory and Grace
For God’s Glory and Grace
By showing in the raising and exalting of Christ he demonstrated the immeasurable greatness of his power as seen in 1:19-20; but in raising and exalting us he displayed also ‘the immeasurable riches of his grace’, and will continue to do so throughout eternity. For you and I are living evidences of his kindness and we will point other people to him to whom we owe our Salvation.
Salvation is more than forgiveness. It is deliverance from the death, slavery and wrath described in verses 1-3. It includes our total new life in Christ, together with whom we have been made alive and exalted and seated in the heavenly realm.
Grace is God’s free and undeserved mercy towards us, and ‘faith’ is the humble trust with which we receive it for ourselves.
Mis-understanding of Faith
J.P. Moreland
May people today understand the word faith (pistis) to mean a blind choice to believe something in the absence of any good reason to make that choice. Faith is viewed as a privatized expression of emotion. But this view does not reflect a biblical concept of faith; in fact, it represents practically the opposite of biblical faith.
Biblical faith is trust or confidence in something that is based on knowledge or good reason.
Think about the choice to drive a car. If the engine makes odd noises and the exterior is rusty and the car just doesn’t appear to be well cared for, you may hesitate to put your trust in it to get you from one place to another. However if you are borrowing it from a friend who takes care of things and it is a relatively new model with a good reputation, you may drive it without giving it a second thought.
The more you know about a car, the more you trust in it will be appropriate or warranted and if the car is actually a good one, rightly strengthened. In a similar way our faith is not opposed to reason or knowledge; it is built on reason and knowledge.
We cannot choose to be something that we do not first truly BELIEVE.
Note:
Notice the order in which things take place leading to true faith.
We are saved by Grace through faith, grace is the ground and agency of our Salvation.
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
"Faith occupies the position of a channel or conduit pipe. Grace is the foundation and the stream. Faith is the aqueduct along which the mercy flood flows down to refresh the thirsty sons of men... I remind you again that faith is only the channel or the aqueduct, and not the fountainhead. We must not look to it so much that we exalt it above the divine source of all blessing which lies in the grace of God." Why is grace prior to and preeminent to faith?
Most religions throughout history have taught that salvation is achieved by what you do through good works. Others say that acts of contrition (saying your sorry) along with living a moral life is the way to atone for our sin. Sorrow over sin is certainly necessary but it falls short.
Salvation is not the result of good intentions. The road to hell, is paved with good intentions. We may fill our lives with good works, but even one sin makes us a sinner in practice, and we are already sinners by nature. No matter how well-intentioned or “good” we may think we are, the fact is that we simply do not have the power or the goodness to overcome the sin nature we have inherited from Adam. WE need something more powerful, and this is where grace comes in. (The immeasurable riches of His Grace)
By Grace we receive the faith that is necessary to Believe and be Saved!
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Note: We must never think of Salvation as a kind of transaction, like buying a car, between us and God, where we come into the deal 50/50 between God and us in which he contributes grace and we contribute faith. For we were dead, and had to be quickened before we could come alive and have the faith to believe.
Faith: Turning to God with a great sense of need and weakness and emptiness and a willingness to receive what he offers, to receive the Lord himself.
Walking out on frozen Lake Michigan. The initial step out onto the frozen lake is an act of faith, but it is not his faith that keeps him from falling into freezing water but the thickness of the ice. So too with us, it is not our faith that saves us, but it is the confidence we have in the work of Jesus that saves us. And that is the gift Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2. There is nothing we do that makes us right with God; it is all a work of God
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
God will allow no one to boast. This would appear to be the reason that God brought Salvation to us the way he did in order to exclude our human pride. The only right attitude, the only possible attitude for sinful men and women before a holy God and judge is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, to find our humble dependence on Him alone.
Our only avenue to boast as Paul say’s is in the cross of Christ. Galatians 6:14
14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
We are Both Exhibits of God’s Skill and Trophies of His GRACE
Notice that Paul has already declared that Salvation is all about Him alone and now we are “His Workmanship” namely that it is God’s achievement working through us as our Master Creator. You can gloat and boast all you want about the room full of accomplishments that you think you have done, however, none of it is your’s it is Jesus Christ working in our lives.
You notice that many times at the end of a victory speech in sports athletes will give thanks to God, however, many times it is couched after they have touted their accomplishments and all that they have been able to do.
Good works are indispensible to Salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence. We are not saved because of our works, but we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, good works which God prepared before the foundation of the earth, He has fashioned us, so that we should continually walk in them.
So, what are we now that the dead has come to life? We are His workmanship. We are His greatest masterpiece on display for the whole world to see.
Creation language is nonsense unless there is a creator; self-creation is not a thing. Remember God’s rebuke to Job when he responded, Job 38:1-7
1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Conclusion
Now just over five hundred years old, the Sistine chapel’s renowned paintings by Michelangelo are considered to be timeless masterpieces.
In addition to a painter, Michelangelo was also a sculptor, architect, and master planner. God is not only the master planner of history and of the world; he is also the master architect of yours and my life. God has good things for us that he has prepared before his masterpiece of a creation was ever revealed.
Farmer Who Photographed Over 5,000 Snowflakes
When I picture God's rejoicing over his people with singing, I think of Snowflake Bentley.
Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, a New England farmer born in 1865, couldn't get enough of snowflakes. For forty years, he ran around in the snow, raucously joyful, catching snowflakes on chilled slides and photographing them, seeking to capture for others the beauty he saw in those one-of-a-kind masterpieces of frozen crystals.
Over his lifetime, he photographed more than five thousand individual snowflakes. His notes were effusive: "No. 785 is so rarely beautiful."
He wrote of the "feast of [their] beauty." As I imagine Snowflake careening in the snow, giddy with joy, I marvel with the psalmist, "LORD, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow" (Psalm 144:3-4). I'm like a vanishing, vaporous breath, and God cares for me.
What are you today that God is mindful of you, but he is, “But God being rich in his mercy, because of the great love he had for us .... gave to us the immeasurable riches of His grace and is now continue second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day to makes us make us into His glorious masterpiece.