Why does our new screened porch delight me so much? I have pondered this for some time while sitting in it. This surprising pleasure has three causes.

First, for our house, it’s a new kind of space. Before it there was inside, and there was outside. This is inside-outside: the comfort of living space but extended into the yard. This sense of stretching the house into nature is boosted by the fact that we can, in warmer months, keep the sliding doors to it open all day.

Second, it has enriched our ability to be hospitable. We’ve already spent hours chatting with guests in the space. I’ve prayed with my pastor in these chairs.

Third, we can scarcely believe we have it. Yes, we hired the builders. But a long freelance career has taught me how much of a gift income is. This porch is a product of a long chain of God’s goodness to us – every link of which is wondrous.

We have come, finally, to grace. It’s the 18^th attribute of God I’ve written about here and a worthy one to conclude the series. For though I can’t say it’s the most important one, it is the doorway to our enjoyment of all the others.

Grace saturates the letters of Paul. This snippet begins and ends with it:

to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.    Eph. 1:6-7

The grace of God operates upon two assumptions: God’s love and our utter unworthiness:

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving.  Aiden Wilson Tozer

Grace can neither be bought, earned, nor won by the creature. If it could be, it would cease to be grace. A.W. Pink

Imagine you are under house arrest. You can see the beauty of nature outside, but due to your own waywardness, you are forbidden to take one step beyond the walls of your confinement. Grace is the screened porch: an unforeseen gift of access to the beauty and glory of God. A foretaste of the full freedom to come.

Like all analogies, it’s not perfect. But it has recharged my astonishment of what God has for me through Christ.

That wonder is essential. So says the ever-reliable David Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.

In these essays on God’s attributes, I’ve intentionally kept application to a minimum. To praise him, we need to know him --- without making everything a mirror to ourselves.

But when we do catch our reflection in the glory of his perfection, it’s an appalling contrast. Without Christ, we deserve no access to that glorious God.

Grace assures us that we will never need to be without Christ.

And that the sliding doors are always open.

Father, thank you for the ways in which you remind us of and underscore your amazing grace. Never let us outgrow our wonder of it.

Reader: What helps you to see afresh his grace?

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