God's works and God's grace

In the past I have commented on the John 9 passage about working the works of God. Click here to see the post. The implication is that we have the opportunity to "work the works of God" we have the opportunity to be his hands to people here on Earth. Recently I was thinking about that verse in combination with the 2 Corinthians 12:9 passage were Paul is told by God, "My grace is sufficient for you" when he asked to have the thorn in his flesh (some form of a disability) removed. If you put these two verses togethe, you come up with an interesting lesson.

One of the greatest works of God is the provision of His grace in a multitude of ways to people. It occurred to me that one of the implications of God's statement, "my grace is sufficient for you" could be that one of the ways in which God makes his grace sufficient is through the works of Christians, through the work of His people. God's grace goes way beyond those things that people do, and is not dependent only upon what people do. Yet there might be an aspect of this connection that people are or are not recipients of an aspect of God's grace because of what the Church does or does not do.

The Joni and Friends organization has reported the statistic that 95% of people with disabilities are unchurched. That implies that in as much as 95% of the disabled population, the Church is not taking advantage of the opportunity to work the works of God, to be agents of His grace, to be sufficient to people with disabilities. It is a very sad statement. We have the potential to be agents of God's grace and we choose not to be. We have the potential to have the "works of God" manifested through us and we say, "Nevermind."

McNair