The Theme Thickens

And GRACE

My consistency in blogging has been in question this month and for a very good reason. Earlier this spring my husband, Kevin, felt an urgency to get some family history written down, creating a recorded account for whoever might be interested. We got together with his parents once a week for almost 4 months and Interviewed. This was the beginning of a process that is now almost finished.

Kevin combined his notes from the interviews into a rough draft, chronological history in three parts: Mom's early life, Dad's early life and then their life together. I had the privilege of editing the project and am putting the finishing touches on a story/photo book I'm creating from an online company who prints hardbound books for this purpose. I've scanned old photos from Mom's albums that are yellowed and worn, and marked with hand-written titles, then uploaded them digitally to the book website. Then the fun part of manipulating them just so, so they fit onto the page alongside text that explains the history of the photos. I can't wait to hold the finished product in hand.

As you can guess this takes hours of time and the website offers deals that have expiration dates, so I try to time the publishing to the best of my advantage. So instead of blogging, I'm jogging memories for posterity.

But I'm back with an update on the Grace theme.  After my last post, my son shared a story he recently encountered that illustrates this amazing commodity we can be immersed in All. The. Time.

From his email, "Lee Strobel (a pretty prominent Christian apologist) came and talked to us a couple of weeks ago and told a story about how, a couple of years ago, he was wanting to share his faith with a co worker that he had known for a long time.  He knew the guy was an atheist but he really felt like God was telling him to go invite this guy to church on Easter Sunday.  So Lee walks over to this guy's cubicle and asks him to church.  Of course the guy was like why would I want to go to church?  So Lee starts laying out a few things about Christ and the reasons for believing, but this guy is resolute in that he is not coming to church.  So Lee walked away from that meeting like, great God, that was awesome.  Why'd you have me do that?  Lee said, "That guy is still an Atheist to this day and he never did come to church.  So a little while ago, I had finished preaching and I had a man come up to me that I had never met.  The man said, I just wanted to share my story with you, a couple of years ago, I lost my job.  I was having a really rough time and was trying to find work wherever I could.  I didn't know God and was just trying to make it on my own.  I was hired by a local business to do a random tiling job that had come up.  The owner was taking pity on me and you don't know this but I was tiling in an office and was stuck down behind a cubicle when you came up and started talking to a guy about coming to Easter Service at your church.  I heard what you said and I called my wife right then and said honey we've got to go to this church!"  Lee called that ricochet faith and I think that even if we aren't technically evangelizing, whatever interactions we are having with people, if we are being mindful of our faith and trying to share God even in just being nice, that God uses our interactions regardless of the responses we get."

Never underestimate the effect of an assignment that offers God's invitation to someone he's drawing to himself!

If I can diverse into the hot topic of politics, I'd speak GRACE to our government right now. May God raise up a voice of reason that brings mediation and peace.  How are you praying for this mess? He's given us the privilege of making a difference with our prayers.

We need wisdom and GRACE, Father.