by jphilo | Dec 18, 2015 | Family
The weather’s been odd this December.
More grey clouds than sunshine.
More rain than snow.
More green than white.
I am tempted, and perhaps you are also, to wish for a white Christmas. This Fantastic Friday pick from December of 2009 is a reminder than white Christmases aren’t always wonderful, but God’s daily grace most certainly always is.
Don’t Waste His Grace
Last week’s winter storm made the Wednesday evening before Christmas a rather trying one at our house. Anne and her fiancee thought they could outrun the storm bearing down on northwest Iowa by leaving for Wisconsin early in the afternoon. For the first few hours, they made good progress. But as darkness fell and traffic slowed the storm caught up with them.
Anne called around 6:30 PM to say they had pulled into a rest stop on I-90, not far from Rochester, Minnesota. “We’ll spend the night in the car,” she said. “The visibility’s so bad we can’t even get to the next town.” After reassuring me they had plenty of blankets, food, water and gasoline, she hung up.
If the call had come two or three years ago, the thought of my daughter marooned at a rest stop in a blizzard would have kept me awake most of the night. But in the last few years, I have seen God so powerfully at work in our lives, I was able to fall asleep, confident that He would watch over my daughter and the man she’s going to marry.
The same night Anne slept in the car, the cold woke Hiram and I woke in the middle of the night. An ice storm had knocked out our electricity, but instead of fretting about when it would come on and how our daughter was faring, I piled extra blankets on the bed and thought about something I’d recently read in John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life.
“We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right.” Piper goes on to remind us that we are sinful, we’re the ones who rebelled against our Creator. “Therefore, every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now,a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement…for those who see the merciful hand of God in every breath they take and give credit where it is due, Jesus Christ will be seen and savored…Every heartbeat will be received as a gift from his hand.”
I lay, waiting for the extra blankets to warm us, and thought about my daughter’s life in a new way. The years we’ve had with her are an undeserved gift. So is electricity and a warm house and Christmas and a husband who loves me. If I accept these good gifts from God, then I can trust him, even when what he gives is not what I think I need. Then, I fell asleep asking him to prepare me for whatever news came in the morning.
When we woke, the electricity was on. The house was warm. An hour or two later, Anne called to say the snow had stopped, and they were on their way. By noon she called to say they had arrived. Once again, God’s grace was poured out upon our family. I thanked him for the undeserved gift of our travelers’ safety. I asked him to make me mindful of his grace.
Please God, I pray again whenever I feel my heart beat, continue to make me grateful. Don’t let me waste your grace.
by jphilo | Oct 27, 2014 | Reviews
I suspected, when asking Mary Potter Kenyon for a review copy of Refined by Fire, that it would be a hard book to put down. Once I opened the book, my suspicions proved to be absolutely true. The book was nearly impossible to put down for two riveting reasons.
Refined by Fire: Two Reasons It’s Hard to Put Down
First, the author tells a heartbreaking story of loss. In the span of a few years, Kenyon lost her mother Irma and then her husband David. Just as she discovered writing as a way to regain her emotional footing, her young grandson Jacob died of cancer.
Second, she makes the story more compelling by being transparent. She lays her journey of grief before the reader, refusing to hide her emotional pain, her tears, her anger, her loneliness, and her doubts. We see grief take its toll on her relationships and especially on her youngest daughter, Abigail, who was just 8 when her father died.
Refined by Fire: Snapshots of Grief
Though overwhelmed by grief and shedding tears every morning for years, Kenyon somehow writes her way through her grief. Throughout the book, excerpts from her blog and daily journals are featured:
Grief at Ten and a Half Weeks
The First Holiday
Grief at Twenty Weeks
Grief at Five Months
Each entry is a word picture, a snapshot of grief frozen in time. Between those entries, the reader sees grief melt and morph and reform as Kenyon questions God and hears him answer in sweet and unexpected ways. Though devastated by her losses, she begins to see God at work in her life. Her heart is still broken at the end of the book, but thanks to her determination to cling to God, she is also stronger and more capable than before.
Refined by Fire: A Grief Handbook
Kenyon’s Refined by Fire is essentially “grief handbook” for those dealing with loss, something Kenyon wished for as she grieved. It is also a useful tool and resource for pastors, grief support group leaders, hospice workers, funeral home directors, and anyone working with people dealing with grief.
Refined by Fire Give Away
I have a copy of Refined by Fire to give away. To enter the drawing, leave a comment in the box below between now and midnight on November 1, 2014. To increase your chances of winning, sign up for the Gravel Road’s RSS feed at the top, right side of this page and leave another comment saying you did so by midnight on November 1, 2014.
Mary Potter Kenyon graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a BA in Psychology and is the Director of the Winthrop Public Library. She wrote several of the devotions included in the NIV Hope in the Mourning Bible released by Zondervan in 2013. Mary writes a weekly couponing column for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and conducts writing and couponing workshops for women’s groups, libraries, and community colleges. Mary is also the author of Coupon Crazy: The Science, the Savings, and the Stories Behind America’s Extreme Obsession and ChemoTherapist: How Cancer Cured a Marriage.
by jphilo | Jun 30, 2014 | Church Newsletter Columns
A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
A couple weeks ago, I attended my high school fortieth class reunion…
…Okay, right there was where you were interrupt and say, “No way! Your fortieth class reunion? Can’t be!” But you didn’t interrupt, and neither did my former classmates. Partly because they knew it really has been forty years since we received our diplomas. And partly because we were all shaking our puzzled heads and asking these questions instead:
How did it happen?
Where did the last forty years go?
How can we be this old?
Those of you close to my age are reading those questions and nodding in agreement. The rest of you young whippersnappers, you’ll be nodding too when you’ve lived long enough to realize that life on this earth is short.
Short and exceedingly precious.
Short and easily squandered.
Short and inexorably inching forward.
God gives each person one short earthly life. In that span of years is time enough for God to show Christ to us. Time enough to accept the bountiful gift of His Son and live in light of eternity. Or time enough to reject his bounty and live as though this dark world is all there is. Whichever choice a person makes, one day after decades have slipped away in plain sight, we will all shake our puzzled heads and ask the same questions:
How did it happen?
Where did the years go?
How can I be this old?
The response of those who chose the gift of abundant life purchased by Christ will be, “This is just the beginning. The best is yet to come.” But, the response of those who rejected his gift will ask, “Is this it? Is really all there is?”
Abundant life for some.
Abundant despair for others.
Abundant opportunity for believers to share Christ with those lost in the darkness.
For those who choose abundant life, each day is a gift from God. A day in which God uses his children to show Christ to those who have not yet accepted his bounty or to those who previously rejected him. A day in which God uses his men and women to be all things to all people, so he might save some. A day in which we realize:
Each of our days is exceedingly precious.
Each of our days can be easily squandered.
Each of our days inches inexorably forward.
And at the end of each of those days, our questions should ever be the same…How did I use this gift of abundance today? Lord, how would you have me use it tomorrow?
by jphilo | Jul 1, 2013 | Church Newsletter Columns
For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one,
much more those who received the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
Romans 12:7
Summer in Iowa is a time of abundance. Our neighbor’s sour cherry tree is covered with enough fruit for their family, our family, and the birds. Hiram and I are working our way through a two gallon bag of lettuce given to us by friends. Every week, we feast on fresh-picked strawberries from our CSA share.
But the abundance of summer garden produce pales compared to the abundance of God’s eternal grace described in Romans 5. Over and over, Paul reminds us of two things: the abundance of human sin and God’s abundant grace. He reminds us that have a choice: to walk in the path of sin, or to follow the path where God’s grace. Whichever choice we make leads to abundance. The first, to abundant sin. The second to grace abundant enough to wash away our sins through the sacrificial love of Jesus.
The love of Jesus demonstrates God’s abundant grace. His vast capacity to absorb darkness into his light. His ability to take what was meant for evil and turn it to good. Not just for some sins in a few lives here and there. But for every sin in the lives of all who come to know him.
God doesn’t force this life-giving grace upon us. But it is always present, as long as we live. Always available, hiding in the mundane circumstances of our lives. Present in the midst of challenge and sorrow. Waiting to be discovered in the unexpected compassion of friends and strangers. Breathing hope into despair.
God doesn’t use an invading army to reveal and deliver this abundance. He uses one man, his Son. And he doesn’t grant blanket absolution to everyone on earth. Instead, he saves us one-by-one. Then he initiates a tender, intimate relationship with each believer. Not an elaborate, one time ceremony, but a daily, quiet conversation. Not a lightning bolt, once-and-final change of character, but a process of sanctification that begins when a person gives his heart, once-and-forever, to the Savior who died so we might live.
God offers his children an abundance of relationship. A relationship that lasts a lifetime, an eternity. A relationship in which we are free to explore his character, delight in his presence and enjoy his gifts. Through that relationship, we see him more fully revealed. We come to know the God, the One-and-only who intimately, simultaneously, and eternally lavishes abundant grace on all who come to know him as Lord and Savior.
by jphilo | Jul 19, 2010 | Family
Every now and then, though not nearly often enough, I am startled by God’s sharp grace. This morning was one of those now and thens as our family and friends gathered to worship.
In our midst were believers equipped to meet every need:
- a worship leader
- musicians to accompany the singing
- a congregation ready to make a joyful noise
- preachers who interpreted God’s word so hearts of all ages could understand it
- children who needed adults to serve them
- adults with servant hearts for children
- believers who know God is bigger than any box we make for Him
- mountain views to remind us God is bigger than our boxes
- master cooks and bakers who prepared a feast to share once worship was done
Throughout the morning and since our banquet ended, several questions keep running through my mind:
- Has ever a family received so much grace as this one?
- Why should we receive such grace?
- How does God want us to respond to it?
- How can we steward it?
- How can we share it?
- What work does He have prepared for us?
The answers to these pointed questions will be revealed throughout lifetimes and generations. The answers will cut us to the quick, transforming us in the process. Much is required of those to whom much is given. And we have been given much.
Sharp grace. Startling grace.
My awareness of it is awakened every now and then, not nearly often enough.
But when it is awakened, God reminds me that the adventure will last a lifetime…
and then some.
