Greetings to everyone! Today we are in Talk 3 of our series, looking at what is grace.

In our first Talk, when we defined the popular meaning of Law and Grace, we identified that Grace typically means, for many, “forgiving people even though they have done wrong, doing good to others even when they have done wrong to us, overlooking wrongs done against oneself to still be kind and good to the other”. This is the popular understanding of grace.

最近肖兰听朋友讲了一件趣事，觉得深有感触。朋友说父亲节那天他到幼儿园接女儿回家，女儿手里拿着一件用花纸折叠的衬衫，郑重其事地送到他的手中，用她那有限的词汇对父亲说：“送给你。”朋友问：“这是什么呀？”“衣服！穿呀！穿呀！”原来，这是幼儿园教小朋友做的手工，为的是给父亲当父亲节的礼物。见到女儿雀跃的样子，做父亲的当然高兴，但是这件纸折的衬衣比朋友的手掌还小，叫他又如何能穿得下呢？

是啊！为人父母的大概都曾收到过类似的礼物吧！或许在孩子的眼中，那真是一件可穿、可用的东西，可是在大人的眼里那实在不成一件物品。由此，肖兰就想到了我们和创造主之间的关系。是啊！我们看世界的眼光和创造主看世界的眼光又会是怎样的不同呢？一定比孩子和大人看那件衬衫的距离要大得多吧？今天的经文《以赛亚书》40章12到17节，就向我们指出了这个差距。通过这个指出，我们将会再次从中领略造物主的伟大与奇妙，看到人的渺小，看到惟有神才是人真正的依靠。盼望透过今天的学习，我们可以在困难来临的时候更懂得依靠神。