Grace

January 7, 2020

THREE GRACES FROM PEOPLE I LOVE

Mercy is not receiving the bad you deserve. Grace is receiving the good you didn’t deserve. 

1.  Whenever I am preparing sermons or planning my outlines for mission work, I get nervous. Actually, I get more than nervous. I tend to withdraw as I focus on the work before me, always wondering if what I am preparing is the right stuff, if it is what the people need, if it is indeed an apt word from the Lord. When I was preaching weekly, Sunday mornings were the worst. I couldn’t eat breakfast; my stomach would be in knots until the first service was over. Once I had preached it, I was able to settle down for round two. 

All this to say, when I’m in the preparation mode, I’m not very pleasant to be around. This morning was one of those times. Linda noticed (she would have had to be comatose not to), and called me on it. Fortunately for me, she recovers quickly, and what could have been a bad day wasn’t. From her I received grace today.

2.  Last night at our men’s Bible study, one of the members had a lot of questions. To be sure, it was a knotty text, and some wanted to rush through it. He asked me as pastor what I thought of it, and I did my best to answer. As we were wrapping up, he stopped by my place at the table, put his hand on my shoulder, thanked me for taking the time to answer his question, and said how much my ministry over the years has meant to him. It was an unexpected word of grace that was an encouragement to me as I am preparing to minister in Cuba.

3.  She can’t do much anymore. It takes all her energy to get from her recliner to the bathroom, and when we visit, she just sits. Last year, she would get up, fix lunch, set the table. Not now. This morning as we sat and talked, I could see her beginning to wear out. After about an hour of conversation, mom closed her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. She woke up, we talked some more, and once more, she dozed off. She did manage however, to make sure she gave Linda some money as a donation to the pregnancy care center our daughter runs. 

It is largely due to her influence that I am who I am today. As a child, we didn’t go to church, but about the time I turned twelve, she decided we needed to do so. So we did, and it was in that church that I first heard the Gospel. I came to Christ, and the trajectory of my life changed. In a mission conference when I was fourteen, I responded to an invitation to dedicate myself to full time Christian work. My parents were asked to stand in affirmation of my decision. Trembling, mom stood with dad, knowing as I did not, that it might mean my living halfway around the world. It meant letting go more than she was prepared to do, but she did it anyway. Grace has been her gift to me throughout my life, and though she is unable to do much these days, her gift to our daughter is merely one more demonstration of the grace I’ve known for seventy years.