Grace

Dear Liam, 

Today's Advent word was "grace." 

When I was growing up, I think that my default definition of grace 

was thinking of pictures like the ones of Anna below: 

But the more I have learned about grace through the years, I don't think the pictures above (while they are beautiful) paint the whole picture of grace. 

The best picture that came to mind today was this one below. 

After my dad had his accident this fall (I think you knew that he fell 30 feet while at a rock climbing gym in early October), he had many injuries and was in the hospital for 3 weeks.  We reached out to friends all over the world to pray for him.  This picture of the Children of the Kingdom in India was one of the best gifts I got during my dad's recovery. 

At Thanksgiving, my dad got to come visit us and he even walked with me around Green Lake. Pretty remarkable for a 70 year old man who just 5 weeks before had broken his heel, fractured his sternum, fractured his pelvis and damaged some of his vertebrae too.  

At dinner one night before Thanksgiving, we went around the table, named one thing we were thankful for and wrote them on these little paper leaves. My dad wrote these words: 

"The prayers of many" 

This is grace- an undeserved gift, one that comes to you not when you have it all together, but when you are at the end of your rope and you are given hope and joy in the midst of pain and loss. 

I am praying that you will know God's amazing grace each day, Liam. 

Ephesians 2:8-10The Message (MSG)

7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Ephesians 2:8 (NIV) 

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast.