A Year Full of Grace

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9

For years, when I attended church on Sunday, our pastor would begin his sermon with these exact words “Grace Be to you and Peace from God Our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ”. The words would settle me in my seat and turn off distracting thoughts that were racing through my mind so I would be ready to absorb the words the minister was about to say. The church would grow quieter and our gracious Pastor would begin his message of the week by filling our minds with the Lord’s word. This is where I began to think about this widely- known word, grace, and how it is being used by so many of us on certain occasions, but rarely are we seeing its total significance in our lives. Growing in the grace of God should be one of our many Christians’ desires and goals as they move through their life on this earth.

Now that I have become more aware of the overuse of this word I know that God’s grace is all around me and nothing I can do in my lifetime will give me any more merit or grace from God than anyone else around me. This kind of grace is given to us from God without any stipulations or restrictions attached to it. Our acceptance of this perfect grace is God’s one desire. Whether or not the people we encounter deserve our grace, God would like us to grant it to them anyway. That is the real challenge we all face. Do you find yourself having difficulty bestowing grace onto others, especially the kind of unconditional grace that we receive from our heavenly Father?

Having incredible anxiety over everything unimaginable does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It just removes all of today’s peace. Memories of the past can help us through a loss or breakup but can also keep us from truly enjoying the present. God intends for us to learn from our mistakes of the past, but not to dwell on forever about things we cannot change. The older I get, the more I realize how important the present time is and how short our life here on earth is. When we strive to live our lives with courage and grace, we look more to the future in God’s kingdom and less to the sorrow here on earth. Our dreams can keep us locked in the past. After I was divorced and ended a 30+ year marriage, I would have the most vivid dreams about my life and it would bring me straight back to the time before it all stopped. After about 8 years, I still have those dreams only not quite so often. Sometimes I wake up with a peace in my heart because the dream revolved around some of the great times our family had. Other nights I awake sweating and fearful of those old, negative feelings from the past that have crept into my head while I was sleeping. I have learned to accept them as a part of just who I am and what I have been through. Most of the time now I can look backwards on my life and realize all of God’s grace was surrounding me at all times. This is true when I think about the joys of motherhood I was so lucky to witness, the beauty of the farm/ranch life we experienced, and the thrill of seeing each child leave the nest and spread their wings.

I met someone, by chance, who was so accepting of his life as it is now and was living it with exuberance, not at all fearful of the aging process. This person changed my life in so many ways, but the one who turned it around for me earlier was my sister. Through her death at 39, she made me realize that not one of us is given a guarantee how long we will be here on earth. I am frustrated when I am around people who dread each year that gets them closer to the end. My birthdays roll around and I am forever grateful to God that he lets me live.

Are you looking for God’s grace in other people? Are we stopping long enough to be able to recognize grace when it is right before us? How often do we search this world for fulfillment on our own and believe that only we have the ability to make ourselves content?