and all its costly things

As a wedding gift eleven and a half years ago, my grandmother tried to give me an obscene amount of money -- a fistful of $100 bills. My mother and I gave as much of it back to her as she would allow, knowing it was a sum too steep to accept. She wasn't well-off to begin with, and to part with that sum of money was beyond acceptance. Even could she spare it, gifts that large, that extravagant trigger some force in us to reject it on first encounter.

Perhaps that is why so many turn from the cross of Christ. Perhaps it triggers that instinct in us to refuse so extravagant a gift. For on Calvary's Hill today, Good Friday, the spotless Lamb of God bore the sin of the world and offered up to us eternity at no cost. Christ chose utter despair and darkness apart from God that we might instead have the riches of Heaven. Today Jesus spread those flayed arms and offered to us adoption into the family of His Father. I don't blame you for not accepting the free gift of God. I've accepted that gift, and yet today, yet today I sometimes wonder how anyone could accept a gift so precious and utterly, utterly costly.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." {Eph2:8}