Walls

For it is by his grace you are saved, through trusting him, not your own doing. It is God’s gift, not a reward for work done. Ephesians 2:8

It’s interesting to me that so many of our figures of speech use the words, “the wall”. When runners are so overcome with exhaustion that they feel they cannot go another step, they say they have “hit the wall”. When there’s an obstacle in the way of some achievement, we say “I can’t get over the wall.” When there’s an escape from an institution, we say that the inmate went “over the wall” (or if someone leaves a troubled marriage, we may say the same thing). When as senior citizens we cannot think of some fact that we should know, we say, “There’s a wall in my mind that keeps me from remembering that." Taking another view, Mark Van Doren wrote, “Wit is the only wall/Between us and the dark.”

Walls, therefore, are stoppers. Although walls may fence out bad things (the dark), they can also keep us from either making progress or getting to something we desire. How comforting it is that there’s no wall between us and God – that grace is ours, unearned – and that access to salvation is ours for taking.

Prayer: Kind and loving Father, thank you for your gift of grace, the gift as large as to be nearly unknowable. Lest our own willfulness be a wall of our own construction between us, help us to always respond to your promise of salvation with our eternal love. Amen

Ruth Ann Lyness (reprinted from the Eastridge Daily Devotion Book, published in 2008)