When we were children, practicing was frequently the bane of our existence.

Endless loops of cursive handwriting; sticky valves on rented clarinets; stubborn keyboard ivories that mocked our stubby fingers. Practicing brought little joy as we outlasted clocks.

But then, perhaps, we found some sweet proficiency—some pleasing skill still short of smooth perfection. We scored the winning soccer goal; our fingers or our voices shared a recognizable tune. 

And so it is as we learn grace. Against the backward pressure of our fears, we sing to others and ourselves of mercy when we least deserve it; of God’s rich kindness finally overwhelming all our callousness. We now rehearse the stories of what Jesus did; what He is doing; what He will do. “For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of His Son while we were still His enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of His Son” (Rom 5:10).

Practicing the gospel is all about repeating what is really true against the echo of our past. The Father still calls prodigals back home; embraces all who stumble on the way; forgives the ones who never seem to get the tune just right. Day by day, we grow in grace as we remind ourselves of Jesus’ blood and righteousness. 

Keep practicing until you’re sure He got it right.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

When all our boasts are at an end; when no one’s left we might impress; when all our tales of make believe have not made anyone believe—we stare into the mirror that reveals our brokenness and pain.

Hard as it is, this is the moment richer life begins. Reduced by circumstance and time to being honest with ourselves, we reach for help we cannot give ourselves. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

We fear such honesty will leave us lonely, loveless, miserable. But God sees in our honesty the genesis of life renewed. “‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’” (Isa 1:18).

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The honesty that seemed to seal our doom is actually the doorway to restored and joyful life.

Grace changes our reality, not only our self-image. Made right with God through Jesus Christ, we grow into the kinder, wiser, honest souls whom we were always meant to be.

The mirror doesn’t lie. And neither does the Lord.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

I sing the solo grace “that saved a wretch like me,”—and so I should. Without it, I would be forever lost and never found.

But grace is more than what God does for me, though there may never be a hymn to fully capture that.

Grace is the Spirit moving in a hundred hearts when reconciliation is proclaimed from pulpits or on hillsides. “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22-24).

Grace is the grip of someone I’ve offended who offers a forgiving hug, even when I haven’t gotten to “I’m sorry.” Grace is the circle of believers, certain of their brokenness, who willingly embrace the addict, the obnoxious, the pariah.

Just like the Child who was born to us, grace is God’s truth for all of us—on us; for us; with us; through us. “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

We teach each other of this shareable redemption by not insisting on our rights; by silencing our cutting words; by holding those who seem intent on pushing us away. We live this grace together in a fellowship encouraging forgiveness.

Pray for the eyes to see this wider grace, to sing this fuller song.

And you will stay in grace. -Bill Knott

The finest things that we can say are sometimes framed as negatives. Here’s one: “Love never gives up, never loses faith” (1 Cor 13:8).

That’s why we celebrate what the Bible so often calls God’s “steadfast love”—His unchanging, unyielding, untiring affection for every human being.

He doesn’t warm to us when we are nice on sunny Tuesdays—or grow remote and cold when we stay home from church. He doesn’t offer, like some parents, affection earned by good behavior. He doesn’t icily withdraw into the vastness of His universe when we play gossip, doubter, thief, or prodigal.  

He pledges His good will toward us with an unshakeable tenacity we can’t begin to grasp, never mind reciprocate. In Him, “there is never the slightest variation or shadow of inconsistency” (James 1:17).

“As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

Grace is the face God turns toward us when in our shame we cannot bear to look at Him. And still He urges, “Look to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isa 45.22).

Look now, and be amazed. You’ll never be the same.

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Make covenants, not resolutions, as you walk into the year, for covenants give us company in keeping what we pledge. A resolution with no witness is too often just a wish, a good intention with nothing but our declining willpower to make the vital difference.

 The covenants we really need are bigger than our diets and more urgent than our visits to the gym. We need companions to whom we’ll make the most important promises of all: to tell each other just the truth; to remind each other of how good the gospel is; to continue walking side by side through any guilt or fear the new year brings.           

Agree with someone in your life—a spouse, a friend, another sinner saved by grace—with whom you’ll travel in days ahead—by phone, by app, by real steps on real roads. Pledge perseverance, not perfection, for walking with another sinner will reveal how much you both need constant grace.        

And when you stumble, as you will, a hand will lift you up, and brush you off, and help you keep on walking.         

As this year starts, invite some other to what Jesus now invites you: “Come walk with me: keep covenant.”         

That’s how you’ll stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Each year, as New Year’s Day arrives, believers wrestle quietly with one of the Apostle Paul’s most puzzling assertions: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Phil 3:13-14).  

How—exactly—is it possible to “forget what lies behind”?  

The year just lived was full of slights and insults:  they fester unforgettably each time that face or name appears. 

The year just past brought wounds—both planned and unintentional. Can willing it remove the evidence of scars?  

The year gone by saw failures—ours and others—whose effects cannot be trimmed by noting January 1. Will the famed power of positive thinking erase the pain of choices we or others made?

We only can forget what we’ve forgiven—done by us, or done by others. And we only can forgive when we’re forgiven—by a power outside ourselves who cannot lie. God “never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).  

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19). 

What God forgets, we safely can forget. When God forgives, we find His grace to add our own, releasing others and ourselves from all of last year’s failures.  

Grace doesn’t simply turn the page. It sees, acknowledges, forgives—and gradually forgets. The year ahead will help us practice our forgetting. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

It’s the most frequently portrayed scene in all of human history.  

Four-year olds sketch out the wise men, sheep, and cattle.  Sculptors craft three human figures beneath a simple roof, and we fill in the rest. Churches erect elaborate crèches, some with anxious animals, some with freezing actors. Billions of gilded Christmas cards imagine this one moment in its gentle innocence.   

Why does the story of a humble birth 2000 years ago transfix a weary world? Because it is supremely a story of hope, of resistance, of pushing back against the dreadful narrative of death and power and pain. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (John 1:4-5). 

Jesus entered this life we live by the low road, though He owns all roads that ever were. He was worshipped—yes, adored—by midnight shepherds stained with mud—men ignored by all the proud and powerful, though He is rightfully worshipped by archangels,  universal praise, and choirs. “God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important” (1Cor 1:28).

Jesus always gives Himself to those brought low by circumstance or grief—the poor, the poorly treated, the poor in spirit—the folks who cannot turn the world their way.  Beginning from the bottom, He lifts all of us toward heaven. 

Embrace this Child. Your hope and joy will also rise. 

And you will stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Our fascination with the stars is as old as . . . one gorgeous night in Eden. As darkness first descended on God’s rich, untrammeled world, there was no fear, no threat, no shying from the shadows. A dazzling panoply of stars entranced the first two humans ever subject to their brilliance, mystery, and power.

We name the stars to tame them—just to counterfeit some ownership over what we never can control. We search for patterns, figures, shapes. We stare as fragments of their shining streak across our sky.

But only once in all the history of the world did those the world counts wise pick up, strike tents, and follow what they couldn’t grasp or own. “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw His star as it rose, and we have come to worship Him” (Matt 2:2).

What grace is this that leads us on to Jesus? How much like God to hang a symbol in the night that brings us to His Son! “‘I will be found by you,’ says the Lord. ‘I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes’” (Jer 29:14).

Grace calls us first to see, and then to wonder, then to follow with our lives.

Journey to the Child this Christmas, and discover once again how hope is rising in your night.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

It’s a tough time to be selling “Peace on Earth.”

In the Christmas Shoppe at the megastore, elves and reindeer move briskly out the door. Nativity scenes in warm pastels are inner-lit with bulbs and cheer. Miles and miles of twinkling lights unwind from endless shelves.

But who is buying “Peace on Earth?”

At first, it seems a quaint anachronism, harking back to simpler times and well-tuned carolers. But now, we fear our neighbors will think us terribly insensitive to be flaunting anything of peace when kids are dying in Kfar Aza, in Gaza, in Kharkiv.

How can the gospel still proclaim a peace on earth that is so rarely lived or loved?

The night sky circling Bethlehem 2000 years ago did not proclaim the end of wars or banish human savagery. What angels sang—and shepherds hoped, and wise men followed, and a weary couple trusted—was that heaven is fully on our side.

There was no war—there is no war—between the heart of God and those He calls His sons and daughters. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The birth of our Messiah sang to fearful, doubting folks like us what always has been true: “God was in Christ personally reconciling the world to Himself—not counting their sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19).

Grace is the anthem of God’s attitude toward us. Peace is His gift for all who choose the Child who was born to us.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

It’s a story filled with angels, and so a story filled with grace.

An angel reveals to an aged priest that his wife will bear a son named John. The angel Gabriel announces to a virgin that she will be the mother of the promised Messiah, whose very name announces our salvation. Her fiancé—like Joseph of old, a man of dreams—is counseled by an angel to welcome the gracious plan devised by heaven to save the world.

Another angel declares to startled shepherds that the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem, and the night sky shines like noon as thousands of angels celebrate the grace gifted to us.

As the story of Jesus’ birth so richly shows, grace is always reaching out to weary, broken people like us. Carpenters and homemakers, shepherds and preachers—to each of us comes the good news that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Every time we fear that we are desperately alone, heaven reminds us, as the poet says, that “There are angels in these fields.”

Grace is always singing somewhere—in our homes, our churches, and the places where we work. Good news rides on wings of light.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott