But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” (Gen 20,3)

A remarkable thing happened: God Himself went into action for a man whose attitude was not 100% right at that moment. Abraham caused the situation, though the mitigating circumstance for him is that he spoke a half-truth out of more or less legitimate fear for his life, under great pressure.

It is all the more remarkable that God should have inserted Himself with such vehemence into a matter where His man's actions were not perfectly holy. The vehemence is unprecedented - God announces to Abimelech straight away that he is going to die! Hebrews 10:31 says it is "terrible to fall into the hand of the living God." Not just the dry statement of imminent death, but the very experience of meeting God without mercy must have been truly terrifying for Abimelech.

In situations like this, in our moments of failure, we realize again that God is far greater than our sins! If the measure of His grace matched the perfection of our lives, so that it balanced it like a tongue on a scale, if it were not infinitely greater - just where would we be? Thank God that His willingness to blot out (and forget) sin is many times greater. That He always offers to help us again, even after we have failed Him. If there were no such addition of something MORE on our faith journey - if everything worked only to the extent that we tried our best, we might as well go to the monastery of any religion, and try to achieve sanctification there through superhuman discipline and mortification of our inclinations.

But God has given us the additon of His own MORE! The power of His Spirit is present whenever we acknowledge that we are weak, so that we fail to live truly holy lives. It is near whenever we are willing to receive it, whenever we do not hinder it. He even works with us in secret, at times when we don't really know we need it. She offers herself to us again even after we have grieved her. Again and again God offers us his grace, without any reproach.

This is not to encourage us to take our following lightly, because God always works it out for us in the end. But let us turn our eyes from our imperfection to the One who has given us everything we need to live - and first and foremost, to live a spiritual life. Our journey, true discipleship, is marked by an overflow of God's grace. Otherwise it would be, as we like to say, only a dead religion.