...grace upon grace...

It's amazing what you find when you keep reading...when you take your eyes off yourself long enough to think on, to understand, to wonder about the greatness of the Lord. 
It's His very grace that allows life:  breath, laughter, taco soup, and fall days.  It's His love that gives us sunsets, rain, groceries, and family.  And it's His holiness that allows us to understand and strive for honesty, love, relationship, and worship.  That's what He showed me as I began to read His word in Colossians.  And my heart was full as I realized that I would know none of that without Him.
But then I read on.  Paul continues to encourage the believers at Colossae, praying that they might more fully know and understand the heart and mind of the Lord.  Listen to his words as he shouts out the worthiness of God, the reason that He is so deserving of a life lived to delight Him...because HE "has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.  HE has delivered us from darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."  Do we even realize the depth of what that means??  The inheritance of the saints of light...that's Heaven...that's eternal life...that's something to be sure of, to hope in, to rest in...but it's also life with Him, right here, right now...life abundant. 
We don't deserve that...it's not a question of deserving that...we never could, we never will.  We're not supposed to deserve it...but it's not about us.  It's about Him.  HE is the one who qualifies us, who brings us life, who gives us hope.  He is the one who is worthy of following, of choosing...He gives us this gift, the gift of Himself and life with Him, because He chooses to...because He wants us to know Him, to be amazed at Him, to delight in Him.  He wants us to be a part of His kingdom.  He wants us to choose Him over everything else...simply for the reason that He gets so much pleasure when we get joy from Him.  So often we battle this pressure of feeling like we have to be "enough."  Rejoice in the truth that you will never be enough...but He is.  He is the One who qualifies us...who brings us out of the junk of our lives...pain, frustration, mistakes, sin, disappointment...all of it.  It is His grace that takes us out of that mess, and puts us into His kingdom, His purpose.  He becomes light, guidance, direction.
Wow...that's alot.  Sometimes you read something like that, and then you wonder what it means...what in the world you're supposed to do with it...
Rejoice in it...Live in it.  Let it make you realize how good He is, how worthy.  When we know Him, choose Him, when we desire Him and recognize Him as life, when we treasure Him above everything else, that is how we live in the grace upon grace upon grace that He pours out to us.  Don't let His grace be for no reason...take it as the gift that it is.  Choose Him, and in choosing Him, find abundant, never-ending grace.
May you realize that grace today, and may realizing it point you to the One who is so worthy of your heart, your soul, your mind...