The Rising Tide of Grace: Seeing God’s Hand in Every Season
Seth Fancy
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of FOCUS magazine.
“My job is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.” Eugene Peterson
“For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
John 1:16 ESV
As Christians, we are called to pay attention. “Be watchful,” says Jesus. “Stay alert,” says Paul. “Wake up,” says John. “See, I am doing a new thing,” says Isaiah. (Cf. Matthew 24:42; 1 Corinthians 16:13; Revelation 3:2; Isaiah 43:19.)
The command to see, to look, to open your eyes, to behold, is staggering in the Scriptures. The call to “pay attention” is everywhere and constant — rehashed and rebranded throughout the Biblical narrative. The whole canon of Scripture itself demands a level of alertness and careful attention if one is going to mine the treasure within its pages. All throughout — we see pictures, parables, poems, and patterns; numbers, names, and numerical values; iconography, apocalyptic literature, and prophecy — all of it, begging us to open our eyes and see beyond, behind, and before us. One clear message is certain when you consider all of this: God speaks to us through revelation — it’s His preferred method. Behold, the call to pay attention.
Nothing matters more than your attention these days. For one, your attention is a hot commodity. Advertisers are profiting off of it. Social media wants to design its algorithm to catch it. The news cycle is constantly trying to grab it. Why is it that every hour there seems to be “breaking news”? And of course, breaking news is never good news. It’s always another scandal, another tragedy, another disaster, another tariff. Anything praiseworthy often gets drowned out by that which is cringeworthy. Cringe gets all the clicks, all the comments, all the interaction, all the profit. But you already know this — I know I’m preaching to the choir.
However, here’s the thing: it’s not what holds your attention; it’s who holds your attention. Because behind every “what” is a “who”. And the who who holds your attention, holds an incredible amount of power over you.
It would do us well to pay attention to who is holding our attention.
No wonder God is shouting to us constantly from the pages of Scripture: “Look at me, look at what I’ve done, look at what I’m doing, look at who I am… Right now…and don’t forget.”
And here’s what you discover when you take up God on His invitation: More often than not, heaven is bringing a different narrative than earth. With God, there is always more happening than what appears to be. And, with God, there is always more to Him than we can conceive. It’s a sobering reality to consider, but when it comes to trying to reckon with the nature and character and ways of God, God is still better than your greatest thought of Him.
Yet, what is even more perplexing, is what this God, revealed to us in the Bible, is willing to do —even when we don’t deserve it. That’s what gets me: He does amazing things for us even when we don’t deserve it.
This is what we call grace. It’s unmerited favour. And it’s wild. Because the more you try to explain grace, the more scandalous it becomes, the more extravagant it is. The measure of this grace is nothing short of extraordinary and miraculous, to a point that it takes your breath away.
I think this is what the Apostle John was trying to convey at the beginning of his Gospel (which many scholars believe was a sermon) when he wrote, “For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16 ESV)
Let me add a bit of commentary for clarity: “Out of His fullness [the superabundance of His grace and truth] we have all received grace upon grace [spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped upon gift].”
In other words, He dishes out grace in heaping and huge servings. It’s wild!
But did you notice? We really have nothing to do with any of it. God created the buffet, paid for the buffet, dishes out the buffet and then says, “Come back for seconds, thirds, fourths. You know what, here’s a key to the place, just come back whenever.” This is grace upon grace.
And according to the New Testament, all we can do is just receive it and be thankful.
* * *
In early February, I sat down at the CMDA Canada National Office in Halifax with the staff team to stop and reflect. To “pay attention” to what has been done, is happening right now, and will happen in the future with our national community. And here was the overwhelming conclusion: all of it has been HIS grace upon grace. One employee put it best, “Every day has been a miracle.”
And for some reason, this year, the idea of grace upon grace really resonates.
Now, there are many factors for this; but one might be the unique combination of it being the year 2025 and how this year (specifically) is coinciding with the anniversary of CMDA Canada being in operation for 55 years — that is making this strangely meaningful.
Permission to be a bit of a Bible geek for a moment? It’s 55 years
in 2025. Do you see it?
5 and 5.
5 x 5 = 25.
The Hebrews would often use numbers as words and words as numbers. It’s part of how they communicated in their poetic form of writing. 
Did you know that 1/3 of the Hebrew Bible is poetry, and the other 2/3 could be described as poetic narrative? There are a lot of symbolic meanings, repetitions, and patterns where numbers are used in the Hebrew Bible. And what is mind-bending is that these patterns and repetitions are messages themselves. For instance, a pattern and repetition of the number 7 is significant in the Bible: 7 days of creation, 7 churches in Revelation, Israel had 7 festivals each year, Sabbath happens on day 7, and so forth. So, for the Hebrews, 7 began to take on significant meaning around things that were complete or divinely ordered. However, the number 7 was not the only number that took on special meaning; 5 also became a significant number.
In the Bible, the number 5 signifies grace.
Certainly, we don’t have room in this entire publication to flesh out all the appearances and meanings of 5 in the Hebrew Bible — there are 300 occurrences — but maybe this was what was in the Apostle John’s heart and mind when God inspired him to write, “We have all received grace upon grace.” He had paid attention to the repetitions. He could see the patterns. And he was having this revelation that all of life and all of history — even with all of the grim and harsh and devastating realities of a fallen world — that God was one who was (and is) still lavishing His abundant grace upon the world, culminating in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. What a revelation!
Friends, it was that same revelation that gripped our hearts that day in the CMDA Canada National Office. And it connected the dots for us, we could see it — this undercurrent running for 55 years below the surface, underneath it all — His grace upon grace on CMDA Canada.
And all we can do (and are to do) is to receive it and be thankful.
* * *
As I write this, I feel like Philip Yancey when he said, “I would far rather convey grace than try to explain it.” (Philip Yancy, What’s So Amazing About Grace (Zondervan, 2002))
With that said, here are some practical points of grace to convey from these 55 years:
- He’s been gracious with His supply. God has been faithful financially and, at times, has come through in ways that can only be described as miraculous. This year, specifically, has been a year of abundance. Praise God!
- He’s been gracious with His unifying spirit. Hear me, unity does not mean uniformity. CMDA Canada carries with it such great diversity of traditions, backgrounds, and expressions across the country, which we celebrate. But there is a deep unity of heart and spirit among us that can only be credited to the work of the Spirit. Amen!
- He’s been gracious with the gift of perseverance. This hasn’t always been easy. There have been long seasons that a required grace to persevere. But we are still here and stronger than ever. More, Lord!
- He’s been gracious with growing peer-to-peer trust. The continued stories of doctors and dentists selflessly pouring into medical and dental students is heartwarming and deeply profound. God is marking these younger generations with His presence and doing a profound and deep work in their hearts. We are praying more than ever for our 13 student-led chapters across Canada—that God would equip, grow, and expand them in greater capacity.
There is so much more that we could convey — but we’ll make keep it simple — it’s 55 years of grace upon grace. Every day has been a miracle.
* * *
As CMDA Canada looks ahead to the future, it is not lost on me that God is up to something across our nation right now. It’s bigger than any church, denomination, or organization. It’s bigger than CMDA Canada. You certainly won’t hear about this in the news (maybe someday), but when you talk to believers at ground level across the country, there is a similar feeling — the tide is slowly rising.
Now, we haven’t seen any massive societal transformation due to an extraordinary move of God sweeping across our nation (yet!); but there is something deep stirring — a hunger that is bubbling up in God’s people. At times, it’s hard to quantify, but it is genuine and real in the hearts of many as we speak. Of course, we are still being confronted with difficult and complex policies that challenge our conscience as followers of Christ — in almost every sector of our society. Systems are still overwhelmed. The cost of living keeps going up. The division and discord continue to rage across tribalistic political circles. The stories of trauma and tragedy are still pouring in. But, we are hopeful and expectant in our God who can do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. Pay attention to the tide.
In the Maritimes, we understand some things about the tide. The waves aren’t that impressive here, but the tides are. A wave can be manmade, but a tide is a phenomenon of nature. Only God can create a tide. But here’s the thing — you have to be patient to see it. You have to wait. You have to pay attention. You can’t go home. But when it comes; oh, the abundance of water, the sheer force and power of its current — it’s a wonder to behold.
Be encouraged — the tide is slowly rising. And it’s marked by grace upon grace.
* * *
So, as CMDA Canada looks ahead to the next 5 years (there’s that number again!), I invite you to be stewards of this tide of grace in your respective places and positions. Eugene Peterson, in his book Practice Resurrection, writes, “Whatever job we get and whatever task we are assigned can serve as a container for grace.” What a thought! Think about this: your office, your practice, your research, your chapter, your classroom, your life — can serve as a container of this grace.
If there was a prayer to be prayed for all of us right now, it might be:
God, give us the capacity to be containers of this abounding grace…and may we also be, in the words of John Wesley, “dispensers of this grace.”
As CMDA Canada continues on this journey, remain vigilant and attuned to the grace that surrounds us. Recognize that it’s not just a concept to understand, but a force to be experienced and shared. May we live with hearts full of gratitude, aware of the countless ways God’s grace is at work in our lives, and may we, in turn, become vessels of that grace to the world around us.
The tide is rising, and with it, a new season of grace and transformation. Be ready to receive it, to steward it, and to spread it far and wide.
Grace upon grace, now and always.