Outrageous Grace

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

I was bent nearly double as I tried to make my body fit the small opening made for me by a police colleague in the broken down door of a derelict pub.

The stench of human detritus slammed into me like a wall as I inched forward into the blackness beyond. All of a sudden, a wave of nausea swept over me as I reacted to first the smells and, then the sight of the evidence of human degradation all around me.
“Breathe through your mouth” my colleague advised me and soon I became accustomed to my surroundings.

We were looking for a vulnerable young man, one of my ‘cases’. He was a proficient petty thief, heroin user and someone many considered to be on the human scrapheap at the age of nineteen.

We didn’t find him, in that den, one of his favourite hangouts, just soiled mattresses, empty junk food wrappers and the tell-tale signs of recent drug use.

We moved in silence wandering from one darkened room to another. On the way back to the office I pondered what had been lost from Matt’s young life. He had been a promising footballer at the age of 11, and among the foul mouthed cynicism of prisons and drug dens he maintained an air of respect for his elders. He was devoted to his mother, who had brought heroin into their home.

As we scrambled our way back out into the winter’s gloom, the daylight hit me like the brightest noonday sun. Such darkness and filth as it would have been difficult to imagine. Yet Matt and countless others inhabit this netherworld in every one of our towns and cities. It has become all that they know and they are comfortable with it.

Easy to feel either compassion or contempt for such people as these: whichever makes us ignore our own need of God's grace, whichever helps us feel more comfortable with the realities of life in this world.

The reality of Christmas is that Jesus bent so much lower than we can ever imagine and lived among us, to deal with the sin within and without each one of us. He humbled himself so much lower for us, so that we could be lifted into his light, rescued to be able to live a life fully and finally free.

And my life and heart compared to the likes of Matt? Just as filthy and dirty, no better, no worse, in God’s eyes, both equally in need of the same Jesus. What can any of us do to merit this grace? Nothing to make Him love us more, and nothing to make Him love us less – outrageous!