Favored

Nine months ago, my grandfather, “Gramps,” passed away. This kind of thing can’t be described. It would be like chasing after the wind to try to express the impact of losing someone like that. It can only be experienced. As I look back on our years together, every memory is branded with his unbridled delight.

He told me stories on the porch swing while chewing sunflower seeds. We’d share omelette sandwiches, coffee just a shade darker than water, and spicy buffalo wings while watching boxing on TV. I recall the summer we built a go-cart that my grandmother deemed unfit for human operation due to the shaky foot steering and metal-piped hand brakes that shot sparks at innocent bystanders.

He sat in the stands for my biggest games and carried a cane named Reuben. I have fond memories of handmade stilts, motorhome trips, wood carved dinosaurs, cowboy boots, and the last tin man he ever made hanging from the tree in our backyard. Even to retell the stories still leaves so much untold.

Setting the storyline for the last 37 years is a photograph dated November 1982. Gramps is holding a two-month-old baby boy — me — with eyes that said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored.” And so I was.

I still am, and so are you. God’s favor, incarnated in the person of Jesus, is a gift that words can only begin to touch. How have you experienced the incarnated favor of God in your life?

Father God, thank you for favoring me so much simply because I am your child. I am adopted into your family because I have accepted Jesus, your Son, as my Savior. Such a deep love is unexplainable. Words are not enough. But I thank you with all my heart. Amen.

Go Deeper — Have you ever felt as favored as the writer was by his Gramps? Whether you have or not, it cannot compare to the favor you have in God’s sight as his redeemed child. May this thought encourage you throughout this day.