Where Grace Is Waiting

Have you ever made a mistake?  Not the type where you just buy the wrong milk but one you dwell on.  One that has impacts.  The type where, in the words of the ever passionate biblical King David, your tears become your food at night as they mock you by asking where your God is.  The type where you pour out your cast down soul and beg for relief.  I dive into the poetry of David as his writings put to pen some of my deepest fears, regrets and thoughts, both good and bad.

David was called a man after God’s own heart.  We remember David as defeating Goliath and as a King.  Looking at the Psalms he opens up his heart for all. He had a full life with seasons of rest and prosperity but also despair and distress.  This man after God’s own heart was a murderer, liar and adulterer and while we love to focus on just the “David and Bathsheba” story he also had eight wives and multiple concubines.  He, like all of us, had sinned against God in many ways.  Why then, would he be considered a man after God’s own heart?  He was by no means perfect and it is easy to remember his biggest failures rather than successes. 

David had a deep desire to follow God and in his own words he delighted in God’s law and loved it. He also firsthand knew the consequences of breaking that law, not in just the practical sense but that it lead to the eternal separation from God.  He also knew the grace of God putting his sin away from him.  He knew the depths of repentance and forgiveness and the heights of praise and restoration.  Yes, he failed on a grand scale, but he also had a faith that sought and received the forgiveness offered by God.

I’ve thought of this lately with some of my own recent failures or mistakes.  It is tempting to want to make something right……to try to erase it or do something that allows you to move forward.  Every thought or action is a way to make it right.  Yet it falls short.  I know things can’t be erased but my human side wants to put as much of my own effort towards it as I can.  Even if I hadn’t failed, or even if David hadn’t and our lives were measured by all the successes it still wouldn’t be enough.  We could never be THAT perfect to be in God’s presence.  Sin would still separate us.

As much as David loved God’s law, he loved His grace.  The law without grace would just damn everyone as it shows how to be perfect.  If there was only the law then we would stive to meet it and fall short.  The gospel of grace comes in and far surpasses where own efforts fail as Jesus pays our ransom price from the chains we drown in.

I think of not only David in the Old Testament but of Peter further down the line in the New Testament.

As we approach the Easter season I think of the side story with Peter.  Peter was arguably one of Jesus’ closest friends.  He had his hopes and dreams set on Jesus creating an earthly kingdom and satisfying their physical needs.  God had much bigger plans.

In Jesus’ final hours Peter denied knowing Him.  Not once, or twice, but three times.  Three times the same mistake, the same denial, the same failure.  If that weren’t enough guilt, then Jesus rose and Peter had to stand face to face with the Messiah he had denied. What do you do in this scenario?  What can you do?

John 21 gives us the play by play.

Peter, in his need to do SOMETHING, went fishing.  Fishing was his profession before following Jesus and part of me wonders if he was going back to the thing he knew how to do best.  The known security.  He knew how to fish.  His own human efforts would show something for fishing at least.  Except that they didn’t this time.

 In a twist, he caught nothing.  After using his own effort through the entire night, they came up empty handed.  At daybreak, Jesus was there, standing on the shore.  They did not recognize him and He told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat.  When they did, they pulled up so much fish that they had to pull the nets to shore as they couldn’t get them up on the boat.

 I can’t imagine standing on that boat with Peter when they realized and exclaimed, “It is the Lord!” they saw standing on the shore.  This man was so overwhelmed with emotion that he jumped ship and swam to the shore where grace was waiting for him.  What followed was a conversation I could never imagine having.

 As Peter’s denial of Jesus hung between them, Jesus offered grace, and redemption……and breakfast food. Peter was grieved as Jesus asked him not once, or twice, but three times if he loved him.  The same number of times as he had denied him.  Not only does Jesus offer grace to Peter but charges him with “feeding his sheep”.  He takes a man who has made mistakes clear up to denying him and entrusts him to lead His people.  Not generally the first thing you would do for someone who betrayed you.  You may forgive them, but not put them in a leadership role over what you love most.

I think of these two men centuries apart, David and Peter.  The depths of their mistakes mirror my own yet God still actively pursues and waits with grace.  As much as they may have tried, there was nothing they could do on their own efforts.  They had seasons of life of both failure and prosperity; seasons of distress where God’s grace was recognized as needed more than other times.  They were after God’s own heart in all their messiness.

 I think of where grace is actively waiting….with love, redemption, continually working to cast away our sin with a fresh start….and food.  I think of the words in Psalm 42 with David’s strong language of tears and a cast down soul; yet ends with him stating “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”  How these words can ring true centuries later for Peter, and centuries later for me.

Chasing of Wind

Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”  Ironically, I’ve been absent in my writings the past few years because sometimes it hurts too much to write.  Your words haunt you years later as you realize you are so different from who you used to be and what you wanted in life.

 As I read through past writings, that now sound like someone else’s thoughts and life, I cringe at some life moments, decisions and even vision for my life.  It can also be a healing process though as even when I am in a different place in life, the foundational truths are the same.  Reflecting on the waves of losses and gains in life and how they were wrestled through with God can be devastating but also gives me hope for future versions of myself.

Everybody has at least one chapter in life they don’t read out loud. The ones where we stood or were pushed too close to the fire and now have singed edges.  These are the chapters that if I did write “hard and clear,” as Hemingway suggests, they would just be angry and dark ink blotted pages.

Personally, as an overthinker, these chapters with failures, doubts and insecurities play over and over and beg to not only be re-read but re-lived, even when I know better.  Even when there are good chapters with success, confidence and pure joy to focus on instead.

As I transition to what is likely approaching the second half of my life, I’ve thought of these chapters a lot.  Mostly because I’ve been challenged over the last few months of what my vision is for it.  See, when I meet people, they tend to put me in a box of whatever context they meet me in and see my identity as such.  Either I’m really smart to them, super ditzy, religious, fun, a sheltered home schooler, business oriented, people oriented, shy, experienced in life or naïve.  The lucky ones see all these parts.

I don’t like being put in a box, but I’ve realized I do it to others as well, in fact, in our current society it is almost impossible to not make assumptions about others and their stories.  We boldly declare social, political, religious, medical and life beliefs, and then put each other in the appropriate boxes based on our experiences and assumptions.

I was asked recently what motivates or inspires me.  How do you answer this question when there are so many things but also want to avoid the boxes?  For me it probably comes down to God and connecting with others or being involved in life in general.  I love life and being a part others’ lives and their successes.  To me, there is nothing better than time spent making memories with others.

I embrace meeting new people and sharing celebrations, hardships, laughter and joys with them.  I love to sit down over coffee or just spend time with someone to see what makes them who they are.  It always fascinates me.  I used to feel like I could peg someone and who they are quickly.  If I’m honest it is just because I would lump them in a box of who I thought they were, not that I actually knew them or heard their stories. 

As I contemplate my own vision for life and what inspires me, I can’t help but think on what we all strive for and chase in our own lives.  Is it family? God? Career? Wealth? Experiences? Knowledge? Adventure? Travel? All of the above?  Or maybe it changes based on where we are at in life?  They’re all things I love.

My history addict side wants to delve into what people have advised over the years and what their experiences have been with what is worth chasing in life, but ultimately, I come back to where my foundations lay, on what the Bible says.

Ecclesiastes is one of the “wisdom books” of the Bible, and while I love knowledge and wisdom, it is quite frankly downright depressing. It is a narration of a man who has experienced and done everything. Why not read the perspective of someone who has already achieved anything I would ever strive for?

Ecclesiasties 2:9-11

⁹ So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. ¹⁰ And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. ¹¹ Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

At this point in life, I’ve done some of my own chasing of winds.  I’ve moved across the country with a band, I’ve done the college student life, the big city life, the career life, the church life, the move across the country on your own life, the small-town apartment above shops life.  I am grateful for all of it but living 1,500 miles from where I was born was never in the original plan and I never would have envisioned my current chapter even just three years ago. 

Perhaps it is all vanity and a chasing of the wind as Ecclesiastes suggests.  Maybe there is nothing to be gained under the sun.

Or maybe, maybe the key is the “under the sun,” part and that there is still a future hope far past the vanity and chasing of life, whatever corners of our kingdom we currently live.

The more I have wrestled with God the more I see His consistency and love of me in how He has mapped out my life.  Not in a way I originally would have.  Not the pain free, Better Homes and Garden picturesque life, but full of discovery and sometimes hard, repeated life lessons.  Where others have failed me, and even claimed erroneous words from God, I can look back and see what He has done despite them, or even despite myself.

I think of a future where we enjoy the fact that God has redeemed our chasings; where we don’t flimsily attempt to hold on to Him with our own efforts.  One where we live in peace within every chapter as it has everything to do with His efforts and holding onto us instead.

As I contemplate where I am at in life, where I’ve been, and what the future may hold I can take a deep breath.  I rest in the fact that regardless of where others may box me in or I may box others, God still loves us.  As a God who created unique individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, personalities in His world I can’t help but smile at his creativity and desire for good things for us in each story and chapter in this fallen world we live in. 

He doesn’t turn away from my ink blotted pages, or scoff at my chasings of wind or shy away from my wrestling and angry conversations with Him.  He never promised a certain type of life and prosperity. Instead, He gathers the ever changing chapters, binds them up together and turns it into a beautiful story of adventure, intrigue, danger, self-sabotage, villains, heroes, mystery, love, pain and ultimately peace and confidence in Him.  He joins us and understands the chase while whispering “I’m still here.”