The Password Reset

Most of us have been there — staring at a Gmail login screen, cycling through every password combination we can think of, growing more frustrated with each failed attempt. We know we belong on the other side of that screen, but we've locked ourselves out, and no amount of trying harder is going to fix it.

Then we swallow our pride and click: "Forgot password?"

Within seconds, a reset email arrives — not because we earned it, not because we finally remembered the right answer, but because someone on the other side extended us another way in. The link is valid for twenty-four hours. It asks nothing more than that we click it. One small act of trust, and suddenly we're in. Fresh credentials. A clean start.

That is grace.

Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that we were spiritually locked out — separated from God not by bad luck but by our own choices. No amount of effort could crack the code. We couldn't remember what we had never truly known.

But God sent an offer anyway. Not to an inbox — to a manger in Bethlehem and then to a cross on Calvary. The invitation is still active. It does not expire. And it asks only one thing: that we respond to it.

Not that we fix ourselves first. Not that we prove we deserve another chance.

Just that we trust the One who opened the door.