Moments of Grace
When I went to seminary I had a professor who gave a sermon entitled,
“Grace is not just a Blue Eyed Blonde.” Now I apologize to women
everywhere about his sexist comment, and to anyone who knows a woman
named Grace who has brown hair. The word “grace”, which several use to
name their daughters, has been discussed by theologians for years. The
church I grew up in was called Evergreen but several nicknamed it
Evergrace since a lot of the teaching there came from the apostle Paul
who truly put the word and the concert on the map. He wrote one of the
verses that began the Reformation when Luther found, “By grace you have
been saved”. Everyone of Paul’s letters starts with the greeting, “Grace
and Peace be with you”. Grace for Paul was God’s unmerited love for
sinful man revealed and demonstrated in the life and death of Christ.
I use the term grace in my life with this unmerited favor way when I as a teacher give that one badly behaved child a sticker along with the rest so they won’t feel left out. I find myself wanting to say to them, “You are experiencing the concept of grace”, but since my take on grace is so from scripture I get concerned with the issue of separation of church and state. When you consult Webster to try to gain a more secular definition, it begins by saying “the unconstrained and undeserved divine favor or good will. So its number one definition does reflect what I would call the capital “G” meaning. However, its second definition, the more secular meaning is “of being in someone’s good graces, or enjoying someone’s favor.
We are in the time of Lent, a memorial of Christ’s great act of grace in bringing salvation to us. We are focused on the big picture with the capital “G” grace. But what I have discovered in my life are what I call “Moments of Grace”, little patches, little glimpses of this big picture that gets me through my everyday life. I’ve been told that I have the type of personality that dives for the crumbs of life, but when I talk about these moments of grace they are more than just crumbs. They are tastes of grace that remind me of the bigger picture that day to day living can often blind us from.
I spent sixteen months in an intensive program to get my teaching credential. What got me through all the agonizing homework along with working full-time and having a family to care for were moments of grace. Let me give you an example.
The 4th grade class I did my student teaching for was not in session for the month of December, yet I had an assignment due in December of videotaping me teaching a lesson plan. I decided to do the last part of the assignment videotaping myself first in November when I still had a class. I was videoed all was well until the Monday before the assignment was due in December. I looked at my directions and to my horror was the line “must include student work samples.” I had a video but no work samples and my class was now on vacation. To add to this I had just taken a week long substitute assignment so I couldn’t take off to teach the lesson again. I remembered however, that the next day was minimum day at the school I was subbing for and I could probably visit my fieldwork school for the last hour of the day. I frantically e-mailed the teacher I had worked with for 3rd grade at 10:00 that night asking if I could borrow a few of his students the following day. I was amazed that he was reading his e-mails that late at night and he replied to me in the kindest words, “please come, he said but why should only a few of my students benefit from your teaching.” I was not only able to re-teach the lesson there but to get plenty of student work samples. It was one of those moments in time when everything clicked together for this undeserving student who had failed to read the directions thoroughly. The ultimate grace was that I ended up getting a perfect score on this project.
Moments of Grace don’t need to be as dramatic as this one. Moments of grace can be simple things. We need to look for these in our everyday lives and cherish them.
I’d like to encourage you this Lent to take on a little mini spiritual; discipline. Don’t worry – it’s not “giving up chocolate”. I’d like you to record the moments of grace you experience daily this Lenten season. Years ago there was a popular book, Simple Abundance in which the author encouraged you to write down the things you were grateful for daily. This expands this gratitude to the observance and appreciation of the moments throughout the day where God’s everyday grace abounds.
I not only want you to look for and record the moments of grace in your life. I want you to pray to be instruments of grace, to become people of grace who bring moments of grace into each others’ lives by your actions and your words. – People like my mentor teacher. It doesn’t have to be dramatic like inventing the cure for cancer; it’s just giving a kind word or just doing the right thing. You’ll never know how you might touch someone’s life. The catch; however, is that most times when God uses you in this way you may never know it. Yet God, and the people you touch will.
I was taking a lay speaker class and I had a one year old son and was newly pregnant again and was assured that I was carrying another boy. I don’t know if it was paranoia caused by hormones, but I was sure that I would never survive raising two sons. This was my anxiety at the first meeting when everyone introduced themselves. I already knew Tom and his wife TJ, but when Tom introduced himself he calmly and simply said, “My wife and I have two sons”. It was as if those words jumped out at me, calming my fears. I found myself thinking, “TJ has two boys and she hasn’t gone crazy.”
Those of you who know me know that I do in fact have two sons and that I am in fact, crazy, but in the crazy moments of my life the grace of God reaches out and pulls me through with moments of grace. May you experience them this Lenten season and become one of God’s agents who bring these moments of grace into the lives of others.
And oh yes, “Grace and peace be with you”.
This blog then will be a time for me to share "moments of grace" I've experienced in my own life to encourage you all to seek out your own.
Please become a follower so that you too can respond and share your own "moments of grace."
I will officially begin our journey on February 14, 2018. Hope you all join me!
MJ
I use the term grace in my life with this unmerited favor way when I as a teacher give that one badly behaved child a sticker along with the rest so they won’t feel left out. I find myself wanting to say to them, “You are experiencing the concept of grace”, but since my take on grace is so from scripture I get concerned with the issue of separation of church and state. When you consult Webster to try to gain a more secular definition, it begins by saying “the unconstrained and undeserved divine favor or good will. So its number one definition does reflect what I would call the capital “G” meaning. However, its second definition, the more secular meaning is “of being in someone’s good graces, or enjoying someone’s favor.
We are in the time of Lent, a memorial of Christ’s great act of grace in bringing salvation to us. We are focused on the big picture with the capital “G” grace. But what I have discovered in my life are what I call “Moments of Grace”, little patches, little glimpses of this big picture that gets me through my everyday life. I’ve been told that I have the type of personality that dives for the crumbs of life, but when I talk about these moments of grace they are more than just crumbs. They are tastes of grace that remind me of the bigger picture that day to day living can often blind us from.
I spent sixteen months in an intensive program to get my teaching credential. What got me through all the agonizing homework along with working full-time and having a family to care for were moments of grace. Let me give you an example.
The 4th grade class I did my student teaching for was not in session for the month of December, yet I had an assignment due in December of videotaping me teaching a lesson plan. I decided to do the last part of the assignment videotaping myself first in November when I still had a class. I was videoed all was well until the Monday before the assignment was due in December. I looked at my directions and to my horror was the line “must include student work samples.” I had a video but no work samples and my class was now on vacation. To add to this I had just taken a week long substitute assignment so I couldn’t take off to teach the lesson again. I remembered however, that the next day was minimum day at the school I was subbing for and I could probably visit my fieldwork school for the last hour of the day. I frantically e-mailed the teacher I had worked with for 3rd grade at 10:00 that night asking if I could borrow a few of his students the following day. I was amazed that he was reading his e-mails that late at night and he replied to me in the kindest words, “please come, he said but why should only a few of my students benefit from your teaching.” I was not only able to re-teach the lesson there but to get plenty of student work samples. It was one of those moments in time when everything clicked together for this undeserving student who had failed to read the directions thoroughly. The ultimate grace was that I ended up getting a perfect score on this project.
Moments of Grace don’t need to be as dramatic as this one. Moments of grace can be simple things. We need to look for these in our everyday lives and cherish them.
I’d like to encourage you this Lent to take on a little mini spiritual; discipline. Don’t worry – it’s not “giving up chocolate”. I’d like you to record the moments of grace you experience daily this Lenten season. Years ago there was a popular book, Simple Abundance in which the author encouraged you to write down the things you were grateful for daily. This expands this gratitude to the observance and appreciation of the moments throughout the day where God’s everyday grace abounds.
I not only want you to look for and record the moments of grace in your life. I want you to pray to be instruments of grace, to become people of grace who bring moments of grace into each others’ lives by your actions and your words. – People like my mentor teacher. It doesn’t have to be dramatic like inventing the cure for cancer; it’s just giving a kind word or just doing the right thing. You’ll never know how you might touch someone’s life. The catch; however, is that most times when God uses you in this way you may never know it. Yet God, and the people you touch will.
I was taking a lay speaker class and I had a one year old son and was newly pregnant again and was assured that I was carrying another boy. I don’t know if it was paranoia caused by hormones, but I was sure that I would never survive raising two sons. This was my anxiety at the first meeting when everyone introduced themselves. I already knew Tom and his wife TJ, but when Tom introduced himself he calmly and simply said, “My wife and I have two sons”. It was as if those words jumped out at me, calming my fears. I found myself thinking, “TJ has two boys and she hasn’t gone crazy.”
Those of you who know me know that I do in fact have two sons and that I am in fact, crazy, but in the crazy moments of my life the grace of God reaches out and pulls me through with moments of grace. May you experience them this Lenten season and become one of God’s agents who bring these moments of grace into the lives of others.
And oh yes, “Grace and peace be with you”.
This blog then will be a time for me to share "moments of grace" I've experienced in my own life to encourage you all to seek out your own.
Please become a follower so that you too can respond and share your own "moments of grace."
I will officially begin our journey on February 14, 2018. Hope you all join me!
MJ
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