Flowing Like a River

If the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

(Romans 5:15)

People talk about grace, but, as a rule, they know very little about it.  Let a businessman visit a banker to borrow a few thousand dollars for sixty or ninety days; if he is well able to pay, the banker will perhaps lend him the money if he can get another responsible man to cosign the note.  They give what they call "three days grace" after the sixty or ninety days have expired; but they will make the borrower pay interest on the money during these three days, and if he does not return both principal and interest at the appointed time, they will sell his possessions.  They will perhaps evict him from his house and take the last piece of furniture he owns.

That is not grace at all, but if fairly illustrates man's idea of it.  Real grace not only frees you from payment of the interest, but of the principal as well.

For many years men tried to find the source of the Nile.  The river of grace has been flowing through this dark earth for six thousand years, and we certainly ought to be more anxious to find that than to discover the source of the Nile.

I remember being in Texas a few years ago, in a place where the country was very dry and parched.  In that dry country there is a beautiful river that springs right out of the ground.  It flows along and on both sides of the river you find life and vegetation.  Grace flows like that river, and you can trace its source right up to the very heart of God.

-- D.L. Moody