Fair or Triple-scooped Grace?
When our three sons were small, Lindy and I loved to come up with creative ways to embed the truths and ways of God into their young, moldable hearts. One way was through colorful picture books, which inspired me to write one called The Story of God and Man, which is now available at our church or online at storyofgodandman.org.
The other creative way was through lived-out illustrations, like the day we used our family supper- time to help our boys discover how much of God’s grace we really enjoy every day.
One night, as our lively suppertime was nearing an end, my wife said: “Okay, who wants ice cream?” Of course, all our guys squealed with delight at the prospect, especially as they saw her serve me a Mount Everest-sized portion with more scoops piled on top of each other than our little guys had ever seen before…
“Wow! Look at that!” they drooled, as they instantly began to get drunk with expectation. Then, she handed them each a bowl the size of mine, but with only one, tiny scoop swimming around the bottom all by its lonesome. You can probably guess their familiar response…
“Heyyyyy…. that’s not fair!” said the oldest.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“That’s not fair, Dad.”
“Yeah,” said the brothers.
“What do you mean, boys?”
“Well, mom gave you that huge pile of ice cream, and all we got was a tiny scoop. That’s not fair!”
“Oh, you want ‘fair’, do you?” I asked.
“For sure,” they all agreed.
“Okay. Go get your piggy banks.”
“Huh?”
“Go get your allowance money.”
“Uh, why?”
“Because if you want fair, then each of you owes us three dollars for your meal, a quarter for your glass of milk, and another dollar for the ice cream you’ve been served, or four dollars if you want as much ice cream as I am having. You are right; it is not fair that we have to pay for your meals every day, and you pay nothing. So, let’s do ‘fair.’ Unless, of course, you prefer our ‘grace’ which pays for all the things you enjoy without earning any of it on your own. What’ll it be?”
“Grace, Dad. We prefer grace! And thank you for our ice cream. Yes, sir. You bet. Right, guys?”
“Uh, huh. We don’t want ‘fair.’ We want grace!”
Look, we’re eating it right now.
“Ah, you got it! Good for you!” And with that, their mom piled their bowls high!
From that day forward, anytime one of the brothers felt cheated in some way at home and reflexively cried out: “Hey, that’s not fair,” the others would quickly remind him: “You don’t want fair…you want grace! Here, quickly, let’s work it out!” In fact, they even figured out that their allowance money was from our grace as well!
And so it is with our heavenly Father. He didn’t have to plant us in our mother’s womb, let us be born alive, live on a planet with abundant air to breath, nature to explore, sunsets to savor, tastes to relish, families to love, cars to drive, houses to decorate, people to meet, opportunities to enjoy, the hurting to comfort, the needy to help, a Savior to discover, and miracles to experience. It’s all by His grace. Yet we live as if we deserve it all, or worse, as if we have earned it all.
We rarely thank Him, usually ignore Him, and don’t even think about serving and loving Him from the depths of a grateful heart. We just tend to go along our prissy, little way. And heaven forbid if anything ever goes wrong and gets taken away. “Hey, that’s not fair! Where’s God in this!?”
Well, He’s right there, trying to help us see that what we are really living on is not our well- deserved earnings, but His abundant grace, even when we act like spoiled brats. Brats deserve corrective lessons and sometimes discipline if they are just not getting it. But that, too, is His grace. It saves us from sin and from ourselves. What a God! What grace! What a Savior!
So the next time you take your kids to Oly’s for some ice cream or serve it at home… think of the triple-scooped grace of God we are all living on. Bon appetit!
Grateful for His grace upon grace,
Pastor Mark
Storyofgodandman.org
May 20, 2012 at 9:54 pm 
May 20, 2012 at 7:45 pm 
May 20, 2012 at 12:36 am
September Emily Mello U have to go into photos and albums and under edit u can tell it to put that picture in another album
May 20, 2012 at 10:05 pm