We got about a foot of snow earlier this week, which I cleared out of my driveway with my trusty old snowblower. But I was reminded of another time when we got blasted with snow and I found out my snowblower was on strike. Twenty years ago, I would have shoveled the driveway out and called it a day. But being older and (maybe) a tad wiser, I asked my neighbor if I could borrow his new whiz-bang snowblower to do the job. Graciously he agreed, and I rejoiced knowing my back would thank me later.
As I fired up that shiny snow machine I was impressed: dual exhaust; tank tracks for tires; heated handle bars! I was blown away. Surprisingly, however, it didn’t go very fast, and worse, it didn’t throw the snow very far. It just kind of chugged along. “It’s still better than shoveling,” I thought, trudging on and stopping at times to let the auger catch up with the snow intake. Something didn’t seem right.
After working a while at this slow pace, I paused to take a better look at the controls. And then I noticed a small lever near the choke marked with a picture of a turtle and a rabbit. You guessed it–the lever was pointing at the turtle. When I switched that throttle up to rabbit, the engine roared to life!
Now I was going fast and chucking snow high into the air! What an amazing difference that power made. That’s just what God’s grace is like in our lives. We won’t get far serving Him in our own strength. But by His grace, we can do more for His glory than we can imagine.
Grace is the power we need. Let us accept our own limitations, knowing that His “grace is sufficient for you, for [His] power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). I hope you are “blown away” by God’s amazing grace.
