Monday, April 7th.

Have you ever had to clean up a mess that you did not make?
When I was 16 years old my family and I moved from Puerto Rico to Colorado Springs to be part of Nicky Cruz Outreach Ministries. On one occasion we were sent to a house up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. It was a home for mentally challenged and abandoned young boys. Our assignment was to clean up the house. Upon arrival we asked to speak to the person in charge. We soon found out that these boys had been living on their own for weeks with no one in charge. You have no idea how big of a mess we found! It wasn’t simply a matter of cleaning up. I remember thinking that it would be much easier to condemn the house and start all over again. Why me? Why should I have to clean up this mess? You cannot imagine how upset I felt in that moment.

I don’t think we can imagine how upset God must have felt in the days of Noah when He saw the mess that sin had made in the perfect world he had entrusted to mankind. Everything was contaminated, dirty and corrupted. And who was responsible for this mess? Mankind, the ones entrusted to protect it. So God took upon Himself the task of cleaning up the mess. He decided to flood the world and destroy the same ones who made the mess in the first place. But because God is a God of grace, he could not bring Himself to destroy everyone. Instead of condemning the house, he choose to clean up the mess and to give mankind another chance.

God had a mess of unimaginable proportions, a mess so big that only God Himself would be able to clean it up. Rather than destroying mankind and the world He choose to clean up the mess. He chose to extend grace. I’m sure God had many options. After all He’s God. But He chose to roll up his sleeves and clean up the mess that sin had created.

I don’t think we can imagine how much our sins have contributed to messing up the world that God once cleaned up. I don’t think we understand that our sins have created a mess so big that only God can clean it up. In spite of the fact that God has every right to give up on us, his response to our new mess is to send a savior. He’s response is to once again extend grace.

Bible Reading
Genesis 6:5-8

The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing— all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Heavenly Father Thank you for choosing to extend your grace into my sometimes messed up life. I know that in my relationship with others I too will have options to choose from, may I always choose to extend grace.