grace, grace, grace part 2

So another post about grace. Except this time God's. Well I suppose considering He is the ultimate example of grace then all thoughts about grace are about Him. But, anyway, I digress.

In my bible study right now we are studying Hebrews. What a beautiful book. BEAUTIFUL. All about Jesus' act on the cross, the new covenant in His blood, how He is our great high priest. Incredible. All of the thought and reflection on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross has led me to one word. Extravagant. I mean, really think about it. God's grace in Jesus' act on the cross is extravagant. God created us, we rebelled against Him. We deserve death. We were separated from Him. He loved us SO much, so EXTRAVAGANTLY, that He sent His son to DIE. Just to restore us to Him. He is GOD. He would go on existing without us. He could destroy us with a mere thought. Instead, He bled and died to make us free, so that we could freely choose Him. So that we could spend eternity with Him. I mean, REALLY? It almost sounds too good to be true.

(Aside note: it is this extravagance that can really get me fired up about the whole predestination/Calvinism/Arminianism debate....stay tuned, I may write a post about it sometime. That is, if I decide I want to REALLY ruffle some feathers!)

How could I not just bow down and worship Him? He is holy and perfect, and wants ME. He loves me more extravagantly and passionately than I could ever comprehend. I could sit and talk all day about the beauty of Jesus, His act on the cross, the grace and mercy of the new covenant. Of his sacrifice once and for all.

To borrow a line from an old hymn, "Oh, how I love Jesus..."

grace, grace, grace

I can look back on my life and identify times in my life when God was teaching me specific things, when he was using situations to show me the same things over and over and over and over. You get the picture. Throughout college it was often, "Am I enough for you? Delight in me. Find your hope in me, not in your earthly relationships..." Whether it was through key people moving away from me, key relationships with key men changing or ending, or friendships I had relied on drastically changing or disappearing. When we lost our precious first baby, it was, "Do you believe me now? When things are hard, when things are desperate, when something terrible and horrible has happened? Will you believe me now? Will you trust in my goodness?" That one lasted a LONG time. From the moment we lost the baby till the moment...well, I can't even pinpoint the moment. But sometime before Jayden was conceived I decided to just rest and know that God is good, ALL THE TIME, no matter what.

Why do I share all of this? Cause this is another one of those times...

If I had to give this phase of my life a theme it would be: learning to have grace and what it means to be self-sacrificing. I can talk a big talk about how we live to serve others, how important it is to have grace with people, and to reflect Christ to them in this manner. I could write a whole blog entry about it and sound all holy and perfect and blah blah blah. But if you came to spend a day with me, or even worse, spent a day listening to my thoughts (scary!), a different picture would emerge. God, however, in all His amazingly faithfulness, is continually giving me opportunities to learn what it means to have grace and to live my life in a way that is sacrificial to others. I am failing miserably. Oh how I wish I learned more quickly, and with more humility. Oh how I wish my first response was Godly and righteous...but its not. My first response if selfishness and judgment of others. But I keep digging in, keep praying, "Jesus, make me more like you.." I so desperately want to be a reflection of Him.

There are opportunities everywhere to have grace and be self-sacrificing. I live with 4 other adults, two children, and 2 cats. I need look no further than the person sitting next to me at dinner to find opportunities to grow and let God change me. Whether it be biting back my sassiness to my wonderfully patient husband those around me or taking extra time to listen to someone's hard day, or offering to pitch in and help even when I'm so tired I want to die and can't imagine taking another step running out of steam. It means being okay with where people are at, and knowing that we're all works in progress (I could write an entire blog entry about this one...heck, maybe I will some day soon). It means not bad mouthing the crazy lady at Bed Bath and Beyond who insulted my pants for absolutely no reason. It means letting people go in front of me at the grocery store. Grace is giving what people don't deserve. It is surprising, and often out of the blue. Being self-sacrificing is the core of marriage, in my honest humble opinion. Putting Dan's needs in front of mine is my call as my wife. I suck at it. Completely and totally. He has this nailed in comparison to my selfish horrible nature. I have to have to have to learn to put down my selfish desires, to lay aside what I perceive as my needs, and focus first on Dan and what he needs.

Ok, enough rambling...

Make me more like you....

We are going to this awesome church since moving back to L.A. They do communion every week, which is something new to me. They also have people walk up and get it and then you can sit and take it at your leisure. So every week I sit down and just try to quiet my heart before God. I try to let the Holy Spirit lead in regards to how I pray and what I focus on mentally. For a few weeks now, the resulting cry of my heart has been, "Make me more like you, Jesus..." I say "cry of my heart" for a reason. Life seems to come at you in bursts when you're raising two little ones under two. Life is a conglomeration of moments of ecstacy, moments of exhaustion, moments of frustration, moments of laughter. You kind of just deal with things (i.e. puke on the floor, puke on you, spilled cups of milk, poopy diapers, tantrums over guitars or water or anything really...) as they come, hoping to do it well and not permanently screw things up. In between all of these moments, these bursts of reality, you hope to be a good wife, an attentive and caring daughter, a friend who doesn't come off as a total flake...and more than anything, a disciple of Christ that honors Him. And when I take these moments in church when my kids are in Sunday School, and I have a moment to reflect, the only thing I can think of to say, the only thing that seems to really matter is "Make me more like you, Jesus..." How else can I be all the things I need to be, do all the things I know I need to? I have to be like Him, rest in Him, reflect Him...to my husband, to my boys, to my parents and siblings, etc....

Make me more like you, Jesus...

compassion

I recently watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy that really struck a cord with me. Meredith, the main character, who the show is named after, treats a death row inmate at the hospital (I'm assuming here that some people on the planet actually DON'T watch Grey's Anatomy, which may or may not be true. I am also assuming that these few people would actually read these random thoughts from a tired mom. A lot of assumption....). He ends up telling her it would be nice to see "a friendly face" when he is executed. So she goes to the execution. As she comes out of the prison, she is met by Derek, her boyfriend, who also treated the death row inmate. Derek, throughout the episodes, has had disdain and contempt for the man, refusing to let him cheat the system by dying in the hospital. Meredith has formed a kind of friendship with him. She comes out and sees Derek and bursts into tears and says, "I wanted to have compassion on him. That's why I went. And it was horrible. It was horrible." As I watched the scene unfold, I had tears streaming down my face.

This is an amazing picture of grace, of compassion, of what it means to reach out to someone unlovable, unlovely, unwanted, undeserving. Grace is radical and flies in the face of the way the world works. This man was condemned to die for horrible, horrendous things he had done. And Meredith, by going, extended grace in a way we could all learn from. God has given us this same radical grace. We are, in our sin, unlovable, unlovely, unwanted, undeserving. We are a mess. And God reached down and gave us grace, and mercy. It was painful and hard and ugly as Jesus died on the cross and took our sin. We are to be like him, to live like him. Extending grace to those around us can be painful and hard, just as it was for Meredith.

A side note: I have seen every episode ever made of Grey's Anatomy, or at least ever aired, and this is the first time I have seen any sort of picture of Jesus in it. And it may be the last. I don't plan on filling this blog with reflections about TV shows that fill primetime. But this time it warranted it.