NOVEMBER 12: “THANKING GOD FOR HIS GRACE”

My wife and I have our office at Ojuelegba in Lagos. Every day while going to the office, we have to pass under the Ojuelegba Bridge. On this fateful day, we had just passed under the bridge and seconds later, there was a trailer carrying a Container on the bridge, the brakes of which failed. It hit the side of the bridge and the container came crashing down. Under the bridge, there was a man and his wife taking their three children to school. The Container fell on their car and crushed all of them to death instantly.

When it happened looking through the window of our office, my wife and I could only stand in awe of a God that was so merciful to us. We escaped only by whiskers. We could only wonder what we did that God considered to spare our lives. What did the family that perished in the crash do to deserve such a gruesome death? It was then that the meaning of the biblical statement dawned on us, which goes thus: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and shew mercy on whom I will show mercy”. God was speaking to Moses here and indeed to the entire human race that no act of mercy or grace is merited by man but that His own will was the basis of all the blessings and grace that human beings enjoy. These do not come from God simply because man likes it or deserves it, but because our God is essentially a loving God who is good, gracious, merciful and does everything for man after His own free will and choice.

As beneficiaries of His grace and mercy then, what do we give Him in return? We can only give Him our thanks and praises. If you have not imbibed the spirit of thanking God every day for the gift of sleeping and waking up, going out and coming in safely, I think you need to have a change of heart and be grateful to God every day of your life.

PRAYER: My father and my God, I thank you from the depth of my heart for the gift of sleeping beautifully and waking up heartily today, Amen.