Few realizations have prompted so deep a realization of my own helplessness. We cannot somehow ascend to the grace and love given us by God. In fact if we take seriously what is in the world around us right now, we will see the true depths of brokenness. There is a world around us that is profoundly broken and in desperate need of redemption. This redemption only comes from the one true God.
And so God gives. He gives out of us own unbridled love and generosity. Even His own Son in the Incarnation, the central event of creation. God willed from and to all eternity to be Emmanuel, a willing event that centers around the Incarnation. God gives Himself "for us men and for our Salvation," declares the Creed. It is only from the One God that the gift of God may come, and only in Christ Jesus is this idea and act borne.
This gift is not something intended to elude us. Salvation is not a foreign hope, limited cruelly to the elect people of God, as if some are not elect, rather, as the Scriptures declare "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." This is the proclamation of Paul to the Ephesians. That we find our election in the ultimate Election of Christ; the subject and object of election. Not that we as truly depraved humans are able to pretend to election apart from His Election. Or that election is in and of itself salvation. Justification is found in the meeting of our election in Christ with human decision, for which grace to decide is given by God.
So as we arduously wait for the return of Emmanuel, we know that we rest in Him. This one truth is the hope of all creation.
