Amazing Grace...how sweet the sound
Grace for today and bright hope for tomorrow...
If you've spent any time at all in a church...you likely know these songs...and many more like them. Both traditional hymns and contemporary songs speak of grace. God's grace. His infinite capacity to bestow undeserved favor and mercy on us.
For a few days now I have searched my heart, the scriptures and the Lord through prayer for a word for the year 2019. I'm not one that goes in for a list of resolutions to check off at the new year, I mainly just try to keep living like I have been, striving to become more like the woman God would have me to be in the coming year than I was in the last. But this year, this year, I need something concrete to hang on to.
In the months before my whole world changed, I sat and talked with a friend about grace and how much I needed it to overcome feelings and hurts that had been thrust my way. My friend spoke of how grace had been used in his life, how he had relied on God's grace to see him through a traumatic time, how he had seen God working through him to use grace as a tool to forgive those who had hurt him, and in doing so helped him to move forward in life, past all the hurt.
Grace. Unmerited favor. Simple, sweet, easy to accept...hard to give away.
I knew after that conversation I needed to embrace the action of grace in my life with my own hurts and those who had disappointed me. I needed to let God, through His grace, change my way of thinking, my way of living. I needed to extend the grace I had been so wonderfully given.
I thought about this for days.
A few days later I came across this sign in a home decor store and immediately bought two.
I sent one to my friend as a thank you for his sharing of the grace truth with me and kept one as a reminder to myself that grace does change everything...it starts with changing me.
I look at this sign every day - one of the first things I see every morning. I have clung to this sentiment, perhaps more than any other in the past few months. At first I had hope it would help how I dealt with my husband and our life together. I think it did...because no matter how life turned out - grace, God's grace was evident in all the matters between us and between him and the Lord. But now, I look at the sign and know that it is still something to hang on to. Grace still changes everything. I struggle with pain and disappointment. I struggle with betrayal by trusted family members. I struggle with forgiving those who hurt my husband, who seemingly don't know or care to make amends. I struggle with the questions that have no answer, the loss of dreams, and the realities of this life I didn't want, but now have in abundance. All of this helps me cling to grace. Grace is my word for this year. I need God's grace to overcome and change me from the inside out. I need His grace to change everything.
Do you have a word for 2019? I know that Grace will be there helping me to soften my edges and keeping me close to the Grace-giver. I declare 2019 as the Grace year. My favorite verse goes right along with this. I think I will sign every email, every text, every note, every post with this verse...
"For of His fullness we have all received and grace upon grace." John 1:16
Grace upon grace, Amazing Grace, Unmerited favor...
Grace to you in 2019
~Beverly
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