Come. Taste. See.

To stand on the precipice of my own wretchedness and see what fate lay before me had not I been snatched from the edge affects a more profound realization of grace than I can withstand.

There are times when doubt overtakes me and leaves me wallowing in a mire of despair from which I cannot pull myself free. Here my view of my own sin is overwhelming. It hangs on me like a heavy black cloak, a death shroud, and frantically I search for its hem that I might free myself from its suffocating weight. I grieve for the wrongs that I have done, that I seem unable to avoid doing. Perfection beckons, and I would attain it, but my feet are like stones and my will so deeply rooted in my flesh that the cause seems hopeless.

Then you in your radiance and perfection pass by and I cannot bear to be so near your holiness. How much darker my sins seem in your presence! How much more desperately I long to have them removed from me, that I should desire them no more and pursue only righteousness! Like Isaiah I hear my own voice drawn from my chest, "I am a man of unclean lips!"

I would run and hide from you, as Adam and Eve in the garden, for I cannot bear your face upon my sin. But you bid me come and linger. "Come, be cleansed, have the bloodguilt washed from your hands and see through new eyes, think through a renewed mind, feel through a restored heart. Taste and see," you say to me, "For I make all things new. Enter into my courts where one day is infinitely more sweet than lifetimes elsewhere."

What is this grace that does not cast us aside when we falter and stray? Rather than abandon it pursues, knowing that we in our poverty could never attain the rescue of our own souls, nor perfect them when in the light of that glorious rescue we stand. From our lips pour forth praise and our feet will not be stilled from dancing in your throne room. You are our Redeemer! And we cannot help but proclaim your freedom to the nations for you, our God, have shown yourself to be the Hope of all mankind!