30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 30
Suffice it to say it probably would have been more appropriate to start with this but I just wanted to wait until the end...I am simply grateful for God's grace and His love.
Today at work I sat with a couple of students...one imparticular who was really struggling. She is just in a broken place right now and really wounded in some ways-trying to figure out how to climb out of it. I sat on the opposite end of the conversation, speaking and listening, knowing the truth that would and can bring that pain away. . .the love of a God who embraces us in all our imperfections, who just waits for us to say Yes.
I so often take for granted God's grace. . .the fact that I can screw up over and over again and I have a place, a person who forgives and greets me with open arms. My life was forever changed when I came to that realization and really got it a little over seven years ago. And to this day, I'm humbled at the path that God has put before me. . .at what I get do for a living...at the people I encounter and am inspired by...and at the constant love that God provides if I'm willing reach out for it.
At the retreat this year we talked about an old proverb that says if you take one, just one, step towards God...He takes ten steps towards you. I feel like I experience that over and over and over again. Often the courage to take one step is overshadowed by stubbornness, or business, or simple laziness...but the minute I give God five minutes of quiet...and stop my world enough to recognize Him there-I am changed. It can be daily...or moment by moment. But when it happens, I know I need it.
It's that consistency that He provides that nothing else in the world can compare to. All these things I've been thankful for come out of His gifts, His will for me. Even the challenges come for ways in which I need to learn...and I have so much to learn. I can not be thankful for any of these things without first being thankful to the one who gave them all to me. And yet I don't always do that...sometimes I feel like such a weak person of faith...
BUT I hold on to, and I'm thankful for...a God who's love for me never changes, who has my best intentions in mind, and who knows me, better than anyone in this world...and even in knowing all my good and bad...I still can go to Him and feel completely loved. That is a beautiful God-and one I hope all I know and love are experiencing...
Today at work I sat with a couple of students...one imparticular who was really struggling. She is just in a broken place right now and really wounded in some ways-trying to figure out how to climb out of it. I sat on the opposite end of the conversation, speaking and listening, knowing the truth that would and can bring that pain away. . .the love of a God who embraces us in all our imperfections, who just waits for us to say Yes.
I so often take for granted God's grace. . .the fact that I can screw up over and over again and I have a place, a person who forgives and greets me with open arms. My life was forever changed when I came to that realization and really got it a little over seven years ago. And to this day, I'm humbled at the path that God has put before me. . .at what I get do for a living...at the people I encounter and am inspired by...and at the constant love that God provides if I'm willing reach out for it.
At the retreat this year we talked about an old proverb that says if you take one, just one, step towards God...He takes ten steps towards you. I feel like I experience that over and over and over again. Often the courage to take one step is overshadowed by stubbornness, or business, or simple laziness...but the minute I give God five minutes of quiet...and stop my world enough to recognize Him there-I am changed. It can be daily...or moment by moment. But when it happens, I know I need it.
It's that consistency that He provides that nothing else in the world can compare to. All these things I've been thankful for come out of His gifts, His will for me. Even the challenges come for ways in which I need to learn...and I have so much to learn. I can not be thankful for any of these things without first being thankful to the one who gave them all to me. And yet I don't always do that...sometimes I feel like such a weak person of faith...
BUT I hold on to, and I'm thankful for...a God who's love for me never changes, who has my best intentions in mind, and who knows me, better than anyone in this world...and even in knowing all my good and bad...I still can go to Him and feel completely loved. That is a beautiful God-and one I hope all I know and love are experiencing...
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