Grace Grown Over

     Recently, an amazing and accidental discovery was made.  History.com reports:

Image: Aerial Filming Services

When rug designer Luke Irwin and his wife decided to create a space for their kids to play table tennis, they never imagined it would lead to one of the more compelling archaeological finds in recent history. In early 2015, the Irwins hired workers to lay electrical cable to an old barn on their property in Brixton Deverill, a small village near Warminster in Wiltshire, England. Soon after the workers began digging in the garden, they hit a hard layer some 18 inches below the topsoil. Archaeologists later confirmed that the vivid mosaic of orange, grey and cream ceramic tiles formed part of the floor of a grand three-story villa, built between A.D. 175 and 220 and thought to be one of the largest such structures ever constructed in Roman Britain.

     So, after a couple of thousand years, a villa that may have looked something like this...

...was completely grown over?  Exactly.  It's crazy to look at something as big and complex as a villa (a Roman upper-class country house), and think that it could one day be gone and grown over leaving behind nothing but a field of green grass. 

     But as Christians, are we asked to believe anything less?  Romans 5:20 says:

Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:

The idea of God's grace to cover our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is incredible enough to believe.  But then to understand that by nature it is abounding.  In other words, it is living!  Growing!  Abounding at a rate that is greater than that to which it is applied!  To know that something as big and complex as our sins, issues, and problems can be grown over/covered to the point of no remembrance is the heart of the Gospel.

Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered..
- Romans 4:7

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
- Isaiah 43:25

This is why David, and every sinner, should have the faith to pray, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions" (Psalm 51:1).   In that moment of faith, we receive forgiveness!  From then on this grace is as enduring as God's love.  And as God's love grows deeper, so does the application of His grace growing over me.  Over time we grow into an image that is altogether new and unlike the old as the Irwin family's Wiltshire garden (2 Corinthians 5:17)!

Maybe the grass is greener on the other side.