A Day's Worth of Grace

I've been listening to Kathy Keller (The "Other" Keller) talk about singleness and relationships. She ended with the excerpt from Betsy Childs' post, Marriage and Celibacy. I think it will be encouraging to both married and single friends.

While marriage and celibacy may technically be opposites, they have at least one thing in common. Both can seem overwhelming when one imagines them lasting for a lifetime.

Even if you deeply love your spouse, the thought of putting up with his or her foibles or coldness or chaos every day for the rest of your life may be enough to make your hyperventilate. Likewise, those who have chosen to lead a celibate life may be happy in their friendships, their church, and their work, but when they peer into the future, the frightening prospect of growing old alone overshadows the mercies provided in the present.

If the thought of enduring your marriage or lack of marriage for the rest of your life is daunting, it is because God doesn’t hand out grace in a lifetime supply. He provides it one day at a time. If you feel like God has not given you the capacity to love your spouse for a lifetime, that’s because he hasn’t. But he has given you exactly what you need to be loving today. Furthermore, God has not given celibates the grace to bear a lifetime of solitude. But he will give you what you need to make it through this day.

God will give us what we need, but he will not give it to us until we need it. He didn’t give the Israelites enough food to last through forty years in the wilderness; he gave them manna one day at a time. None of us has a lifelong stockpile of grace, but we can look forward to God’s faithfulness over a lifetime, offered to us one day at a time. 

Cut them some grace.

The Westboro Baptist Church has offended everyone in some way. If they haven't offended you, you probably just haven't heard of them.

In a nutshell, it is an organization that exploits the name of God to hate on homosexuals, minorities, soldiers and the dead for publicity's sake. They were recently in the news for threatening to be at the Newtown funerals.

Considering all that, I was surprised to read that two sisters, Megan and Grace, one being an heir to the congregation, left the church. Read the article here.

Megan and Grace left everything that they've known their entire lives because they finally understand the grace that Christ freely gives.

The author writes, "Consider how traumatic it would be to know that your family is never supposed to speak to you again. Think of how hard it would be to have a fortress of faith built around you, and to have to dismantle it yourself, brick by brick, examining each one and deciding whether there’s something worth keeping or whether it’s not as solid as you thought it was."

Megan and Grace made a decision that I'm not sure if I'd be brave enough to do. Their present journey may be rough and lonely, but I know God has a reward for them in heaven.

I rejoice that Megan was able to understand, " that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about."

Megan and Grace's wrote their own statement (read it here), "Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did."

Their hope is that the changes they make in their lives from here on out speak for themselves. And that's where we come in.

Pray for these girls as they try to figure out their lives apart from what they've been taught and raised to believe. Pray that they will not be the only ones to see that Westboro Baptist Church does not preach the love that our faith is about. And pray that God supplies people to support them, to care for them, and to love them.

Basically, cut them some grace.

Get out of the corner.

The GMAT is done and I can finally get my nose out of those books.

I'll be honest: I didn't do so hot.
In fact, I was average.
Ordinary.

It didn't help that when I got home and told my dad my score, he replied, "I thought my daughter was smart!"

I did, too, Dad.

I put myself in the corner and "punished" myself for my performance (talk about dysfunction).

What was I punishing myself for? I worked hard, prepared, studied and did my best the day of. The test score doesn't define me. So why was I letting it get to me?

As humans, we yearn for something to tell us who we are, what are strengths are, where we belong.
If we're not careful, we end up putting ourselves in a corner that we don't deserve in the first place.

My chains are gone
I've been set free

                                                    My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy rains

Unending love, Amazing grace

Walk away from the corner.

What do you put yourself in a corner for?