Grace gets unearthed at odd moments.
Do you notice when something’s dying?
Landscapers noticed a patch of turf on the grounds of our townhome that was dying. Because they saw the dying and cared about the living, they searched and uncovered a broken pipe hidden beneath the surface and repaired it.
They didn’t just patch it with new sod. They cared enough to dig underneath to see what was causing the grass to die. I respect people who care enough to dig in and see what’s going on when something doesn’t look quite right.
Is there a break in your connection to God?
I feel the grace of new words and new ideas bubbling up, watering what was dying in me, what is dying all around us every day. It often happens when I pray.
Words call to my voice to speak them. Centuries of other women’s voices preceded them, and they press to be planted on paper. Words often hide in the ground of our being. Sometimes others need to help them be freed.
Sometimes graces frees them. Sometimes grace points us to a patch of grass dying somewhere.
Or a friend in need of a little encouragement.
Or a widow or widower in need of a hug.
Ann Voskamp writes: “A woman’s most sacred responsibility is to be so comfortable not just only in her own skin, but in being in Christ, in being shaped and formed like Christ, like the Cross, being cruciform, becoming the gospel, that she becomes more interested in the ways of Christ, than in what others think of her — or what she thinks she wants.”
Who supplies the wind beneath your wings?
So Many Demands
The words fly around in my mind like the hawks here on the Emerald Coast when they catch the thermals above the waters as they look beneath the surface for their next meal. A woman’s responsibility to respond to grace. To give our gifts. There are so many demands on our time.
I listen to my heart and look for where the peace lies. The heart knows truth. The heart is where God resides. I think about the ways of Christ. We become what we think about. I feel grace rising, bubbling to the surface. It will be there to water a broken connection with someone today perhaps. Who knows how God wants to use us each day? It’s kind of like a novel. You’ve got to get up to turn the next page and see what happens.
When something is dying, something is being fixed through grace.
You wait for many things, but most importantly, you wait for a humble new beginning in a cold and drafty out-of-your-comfortable-life. You and I are being led by grace.
Something is dying and something is being fixed. Is this not the message of the Christ?
In this new year, we see some dying – I’m talking about internal habits, attitudes, places we’ve been stuck, not our political situation which has its own dying and rising of crowds – and that’s good.
We need some new habits and fresh starts and getting unstuck from the same old routine. And we’re responsible, I’m responsible, for fixing what needs to be fixed in my heart, in my attitude of loving all people, not just the ones that are likable or agree with me.
Because I care about the living.
I’m fixing a few things about me this year with the help of the grace of God because I, too, like the landscapers, see the dying and care enough about the living to search, dig, and fix what’s broken.