A Shared Shower (Friday Devotional)

 

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

- 2 Corinthians 9:8

When you use a water hose, the water comes out in one targeted stream. There’s not much pressure—you’d use it to wash your car, but not pressure wash your deck—and while plenty of water comes out of the hose, it only goes in whatever direction you point it.

That’s why children everywhere are delighted when they learn that by putting their thumb over the hose, they can turn that steady stream into a pressurized spray. Water that was previously only going in one direction is now going everywhere. Is there more water than before your thumb was over the hose? No, of course not. But what was once a targeted stream now becomes a shared shower.

When it comes to practicing grace, it’s all too easy to do so like a water hose—having been given grace by our Lord, we show it only to a certain, targeted few. Our family members receive our forgiveness, our friends get a share of our compassion, our favorite neighbors are shown kindness. But as for the wider world, we keep people at arm’s length.

But having made grace abound in us, God calls us then to abound in every good work, for grace not to be something we point at a select few but something we shower the world with. It is not just those close to us who need the love of Jesus, but everyone. Grace is not something we should confine to a targeted stream, but something that should be given as a shared shower.

Grace is something we rightfully declare to be a gift from God, something we proclaim to be the key to salvation, something we say we want the world to know. So don’t just say it—spray it.