IS HIS GRACE REALLY SUFFICIENT?

Is His grace really sufficient? Well, I don't know..what is grace...what is His grace? I've always been taught that grace, in a nutshell, is God's favor for His children. So when I'm told that His grace is sufficient, then I'm being told that His favor towards me is sufficient for my life to be lived in a fine enough way that I'll make it...not without trials and tribulations, but that I'll make it.

It's a cold and rainy night...no that's not the first line of a new horror novel I'm writing. It's just cold and raining and gloomy and dark. I'm thinking about all the homeless people who are finding a mission, a cheap motel, a bridge, or a cardboard box to get in for the night. I look at myself and see that I have a brightly lit, warm, comfortable, "sufficient" home to be in on this cold and rainy night. 

Why do I have this home and how have I kept it for almost 9 years? Well, it's not by my strength...it's not even by my works. It's by God's grace. He is providing this home. He is providing the money for the rent and it's not much, but it's sufficient. I don't have a lot. I don't have a fine home or a fine car but I have what I need and it's sufficient. At the risk of saying the word too much, everything I have at my disposal is sufficient for me to live this life in a fine enough way to make it through.

Every time I go out to start that old jalopy in the driveway, it starts right up. The only times it hasn't (dead battery or such) was on a day that I really didn't need it to start. By God's grace that car has started every night of classes. The long treks to my neurologist in the next city over...I get there every single time. I've not missed one appointment in 4 years. I made it to all of my physical therapy appointments without delay (that car doesn't look like it should be going past my mailbox). God's grace is the reason for that.

I believe that God expects us to meet Him halfway. I don't take what He does for granted. I don't sit back eating bon bons and expect a miracle to fall in my lap, or groceries, or anything else that requires my attention. In so doing my part I find the Lord meeting me halfway. Oh how many times I've cried and wailed for thinking it was all about to crash down around me and suddenly everything "magically" falls into place. Not in any form that would be considered me having more than my share, but in a way that's fine enough for me to make it through. I just trust Him in my heart of hearts and His heart connects to that. He feels my faith like a ray of light reaching into the heavens where He waits with an open heart. When the ray of faith reaches God, a switch is flipped and all good things begin to flow from Him and into us.

I don't make the mistake of trying to be inhumanly perfect. I also believe that God can't stand a phony. He can't stand people who try to be pious and religiously perfect. He wants our genuine selves. He wants our flaws so He can polish us into a diamond. He wants us to stumble so we reach out to Him so that He can prove that He's the one that can steady us.

He's more than gracious with us. It's no different than when we love to give something of ourselves to another. You know how you purchase a gift and hand pick the wrapping, then run home and lovingly wrap that gift for your kin folk or friend? Remember the feeling that comes with knowing how much they'll love that gift? Remember how it feels knowing you're about to make their day? Now, remember how it feels when that gift is turned down because the person thinks "oh you shouldn't have...I can't accept this...I'm sorry but I can't accept this..it's just too much, take it back but thank you." Your heart is broke because you love that person and you want them to have that gift, no matter the cost. They just don't know how much you wanted to give them that gift. God is like that with us. He just wants to give us His gifts but He never spends more than He should and He never gives us things we can't use. He is thoughtful and gracious with each gift He bestows and all He wants is for us to trust that He knows which ones we'll need or want or love the most and those are the ones He's been waiting on the chance to give us. We just have to accept them. (sorry that sounds so corny).

I said all of that while thinking back to my 20s and early 30s, back to a time when I just wanted to take care of myself and be at peace, no more people telling me what to do in my own house, bullying me around, or holding me back from doing what I need or want to do, that which I know will help me as well as others. God has graciously and sufficiently given me that. I have a home, nothing big but comfortable for me. It is two baths and two bedroom even though I really only need one of each, but God in His wisdom and sufficient grace made that way early on so that I'd have a place to start storing baby stuff for my grandchildren. He's put me back in school, which was a dream I've always had. I used to drive past the college and look longingly at it, sigh deeply, and sadly think, "I wish I could go back to school." (The truth is that I wanted to do high school over but that's just not allowed, hahaha).

That's only the start of how sufficiently God has provided for me. Every day, in every area of my life where it's needed and reasonable. How has God blessed you and how do you see that it's actually quite sufficient?

A STORY ABOUT TODAY'S EVENTS

I just had the wildest ride! I was sitting here minding my own business when I heard a vehicle in the driveway. I go to the door and see a Honda SUV and it's making some noise and smoking. The girl yells and asks if she can park it smack in the middle of my driveway. I should have known right then something was wrong.

I told her she couldn't block me in and to roll it into the driveway further and so she did. She shut it off, got out, popped the hood, and steam rolled. I told her she was overheated. She asked for cables and I said, "why, won't it start again?"She said, "nope, if I shut it off it never starts again." Now, I've seen vehicles that are all to hell but it really seemed she shouldn't be on the road in this one. I look under the hood and the housing for the oil dip stick is just a gaping hole and there's oil blown all over the motor housing. I thought, 'what could possibly be so important that you'd go this far in a vehicle like this one?' I can think of only one non-emergency situation, drugs. She was pregnant...I was hoping I was wrong.

She goes around and opens the door and out pops a little puppy, scared and thin. She then lights a cigarette, which I gasped at, even though I'm well aware that ladies smoke during pregnancy...ignorant fools!! She makes a phone call with me standing there and then I ask, "do you need a ride on up the mountain to your destination?" She says, "yes please." She puts the puppy back into the broken down vehicle and reassures me she just needs to go up a short distance and then she'll have achieved her goal and can come back down to the puppy. I drive her up to a house with two running vehicles waiting in the driveway, and many people running around. My first impression? Drug house.

True to her word, she is in and out and claiming to have retrieved a memory card for a camera. I'm sure she's lying, but rather has retrieved drugs...likely pills of some kind. We return to my house and I get the jumper cables out, fill her radiator with water, check her oil but have none to put in for her. She begins turning the motor over and water just blasts out from around the radiator cap. I'm yelling for her to, "Wait....wait...wait!!" but she's cranking it to death. She finally stops turning it over long enough to hear me explain that it's out of oil and we shouldn't continue to try running it for fear of it locking up. That's when she says,"my papaw is gonna kill me, he's just gonna kill me." I got the distinct impression she had done something wrong and it wasn't about the car breaking down.

We begin making plans to get her home as I offer to drive her to her house so she can find someone to retrieve the vehicle but I tell her it shouldn't be driven if she can't determine what's wrong with it. She makes another phone call and whoever she's talking to gets her wrath instead of her humility. She finally barks at the person on the other end of the line, "WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO THEN!!" She establishes that she'll meet that person at the store at the base of the mountain and hangs up. She asks to use my restroom but I felt very unsure of letting her into my house. By this time, I'm sure she's not an honest person and is highly likely to be on drugs of some kind, despite the precious life she's carrying in her womb (and the puppy with her, which is still jumping from front seat to back seat of the broke down vehicle).

We come in and I'm thinking, 'she'll just pee and we'll go.' She was in there for so long that I finally came to the door and asked if she needed me to send in a rescue party. She chuckled from behind the door and said, "sorry honey, I'm pregnant and constipated." It was odd because she flushed the toilet twice. I have nothing in that bathroom to steal except perfumed soap and facial moisturizer so if she was pilfering, she was left disappointed. However, my medicine cabinet door was slid open when I went in behind her later. By now, I'm considering calling the police and having her searched for drugs. I'm also worried that perhaps she was shooting up in my bathroom.

We went out to leave and she got the puppy out of the car and slid him into a pillow case, which I handed her because his little feet were muddy. This took her an incredible amount of time. She seemed unable to focus on a task, unable to understand my words, and unable to complete a motion without something sidetracking her. I'm telling her in a rough tone that I have to go (I just wanted rid of her) and get back to my life. It's odd because she felt no indignation at being dismissed by someone nor was she in any way feeling urgency to get out of my life.

I drove her to the store to meet the person she called and they arrived as I did...good! I said my goodbyes, reminded her that my landlord would have the vehicle towed if it was left more than 24 hours on my property and she exited the vehicle with a sideways, "thanks for your help."

I made a bee line for my house and within minutes, she was again knocking on my door! "Can I use your cables again?" I got my jacket and keys and out the door with a sigh I went. I came outside to find an old lady, her hair flying all over the place and a gravely angry voice, yelling at the young lady about pills. She was yelling back, "Shut up mamma " the mother was yelling, "No! I will not shut up, Mariah!" The two were bickering incessantly while hooking the jumper cables from the mother's car to the broke down vehicle, which now had a kindly old gentlemen just sitting in it waiting patiently for the women to do the work. I wondered if he was hen pecked by this abrasive old woman, who took authority over both vehicles as well as both people.

The vehicle roared to life and the old woman started shouting orders, "I'll follow you Don because it's probably gonna break down....Mariah, get in the car and don't touch mine....if you tear my car up...you don't know what you're doing, don't touch those cables or you'll mess up my computer chip..." yackety yack and blahblahblah. I could only think of the unborn child which soon would be born into that family.  

I warned the mother that the vehicle was dry of oil but she wasn't concerned. She turned to me and said, "thanks for your help...she has no driver's license and stole this car out of our driveway knowing it wouldn't go far." I knew immediately that I had taken her to a drug house, for pills most likely.

This whirlwind of a story ends with them leaving in the vehicle as I and my new wolf dog friend (who showed up during the commotion and stayed faithfully at my side) watched them go (with a sigh of relief). I thought of the girl's mother yelling mercilessly at her and thought that her childhood must have been hell with that woman. I said a silent prayer for the baby she's carrying. The child will likely be born with drugs in his/her system and will be just another statistic. 

I did what I could for this young lady but for every second that passed with her in my presence, my level of disgust rose. I was disgusted by her smoking while pregnant, stealing that car from an old man, putting her mother through the hell she was going through, obviously doing drugs while pregnant, and just generally adding to this world's problems.

May we each be a part of the solutions and not a part of the problems! 

JUST WONDERING

Dear Evolution,

If I evolved from an amoeba, then why do I have a conscious? Why would you give me something which causes me to pause before I act? If you gave an alligator a conscious, he would starve to death, same for a lion. They can't feed themselves if they have a conscious. I mean, have you seen how they behave when a baby deer wonders too close to the edge of the pond?

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Dear Atheist,

If there is no God, then why can I not remain in my sin? If there's no God then what is the thing inside my soul that pulls me away from the things I know are wrong. Why is there no amount of rationalizing or justifying that allows me to comfortably continue down that path of doing wrong? With so many cultures and beliefs around the world, how do I instinctively know what is right and wrong? You say it's a conscious? Well, why would I need that if I'm just a product of an evolutionary process? I mean, if I was an alligator with a conscious, I would starve to death....oh wait...I think I've heard that somewhere before. <shrugs>

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Dear God,

With all the miracles of nature, all the inner parts of the human psyche and the spark of spirit inside every living being, how could I ever doubt that you exist? If you don't exist, then why do we bother with love? Why don't we just remain in a state of instinctual behavior...feeding and breeding, death and the births that replace those who have died?

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To your right is a documentary I chose out of many that can be found with David Attenborough, one of our world's greatest teachers of the planet and the life on it. This is an awesome video that shows many of the animals that we have here on our "Pale Blue Dot" (an allusion to Carl Sagan and the prior post). The animals that live on this planet each seem to be able to do something that the other species cannot. It's as if each one was deliberately hand made to perform it's specific task and each task has the purpose of keeping the planet clean and free from being over run with either plant species or animal species.

If you like nature programs and you're curious about what's going on in the Himalayas, this video will satisfy your needs. Grab a snack and relax as David Attenborough effectively and somewhat humorously explains the life on our planet in at least one little corner of it. I hope you are able to revel in the design of our greatest artist, our God!

THOUGHTS OF A GRIEVING PARENT

This is how one parent who lost his daughter to a school shooting feels about God being removed from our schools, prayer being prohibited, guns being blamed for the actions of people. I've added the video excerpt from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" as a reminder of who we are, how insignificant we are in this vast and mighty universe, and how foolish we as humans can be. We can be power hungry and selfish creatures who have somehow forgotten the most important thing about being who we are, which to me is love:
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"Since the dawn of creation there has been both good &evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart.
In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder I would be their strongest opponent
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy -- it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best. 

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You've stripped away our heritage,
You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question "Why?"
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

"Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. 
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs -- politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. 
Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts. 

"As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. 

To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA -- I give to you a sincere challenge.. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone! 
My daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!"
- Darrell Scott 
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This next part was written by my friend in reply to the post itself and I wanted to add what he said below. This sentence is the only thing I wrote in this post.

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"A Poem Presented To Congress 
by the father of a columbine victim's 
father. 
People with an atheistic mind set have made it clear
they want no part of God. 
They've chase Him out of every nook and cranny
And God being the loving Father He is has 
complied with their wishes. And the first thing they do in 
the face of tragedy is yell where is your God now.
The Atheistic mind set gives no hope to the vast majority.
To say we are no more that a electro static charge on the
neuro pathways of our sub atomic particulate brains, that we 
have no real control over anyways. Leaves people without
hope.
 There is a God who has a Son and He is coming soon.
You don't know anything about Him because you truly
don't want to know. You think you know something because
of stuff you heard from others who have heard from
others. You choose to believe any historic fact except  biblical
fact. Which coincides with all historical fact. 
Who would want to live in a world with no hope, well slowly but 
surly they are making themselves known"
                                                        -Edward W.

IS IT PROPHECY?

This is rather prophetic, don't you think? Click the link, and you'll see the photograph but below that is the article and then below that is some video of the ocean turning red. It's actually an influx of algae. In Biblical times, descriptions of a prophecy were often given in terms that were metaphoric as the one prophesying was meant to simply give the message, not explain with scientific detail of what the process is that occurs to cause the images they convey. Saying, "...and the seas will turn to blood" doesn't necessarily mean that their structure is that of human blood or otherwise, but simply that the images the prophesier sees are of water in the form of blood or what appears to be such. Isaiah once prophesied of the bird with the steel breast plate, which I believe were jets of our time. I have final exams and am in quite the rush, forgive any mistakes in detail or facts I've written down. I'm sure one of my commenters will correct me. He usually does, LOL.

Anyway, without further adieu, here's the link:

Australian beach