Week 52—Monday 1 Corinthians 1:30-31
Week 52—MONDAY
JESUS CHRIST MEANS TO ME FIRST
OF ALL REDEMPTION
The first thing Christ means to me is redemption. I met him first at an altar of prayer. I came there with nothing to offer except my moral and spiritual bankruptcy. To my astonishment he took me, forgave me, reconciled me to God, to myself, to others, to nature, to life, and sent my happy soul singing its way down the years. A Hindu said to a friend of mine, “I believe in prayer, but it is a very deep belief on the part of us Hindus that prayer cannot do anything about the past—the past must be paid for now or in a coming reincarnation.” But the prayer of repentance and surrender to Jesus Christ did something about the past—it was gone, wiped out as though it belonged to another person, now dead, a new one alive in his place.
I have described in Christian Maturity that when the church in which this happened moved to another place, they cut the altar at the place where I was converted and made it into a prayer desk and put it in the new church with an inscription on it: “At this place Stanley Jones knelt and was converted,” and urging others to do the same at the same spot. Tradition says that Zacchaeus used to come to water the tree where he found Christ. Well, I go periodically and kneel, at least once a year, at this spot and water the place with my tears of gratitude where I first saw the Light and the burden of my heart rolled away.
I was in a plane and the stewardess passed around a card on which was the question, “What do you think of our meals?” and I wrote, “Too good for a ransomed sinner.” She threw her head back and laughed, but I meant it. It is the undertone of my life—everything is seen in the light of being a ransomed sinner. After sixty years I’ve never gotten over the wonder of it. “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
Dear Savior, I wonder if I will ever get over the wonder of being a ransomed sinner. Nor do I want to get over it. It sends me to my knees and to the highest heaven. It fills me with humility and hallelujahs. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Grace is written across all I have and all I am—Grace and Gratitude.