Grace for Others

I struggled with what to write tonight.  Some nights I'm like that... don't really have anything to say, or anything that I want to share.  Lots in this small mind, but nothing worth letting out ;-)

I decided to thumb through my journal to see if I had any ideas.  My journal is just a collection of quotes from books I'm reading, and my list of 1000 gifts, and any prayer requests I may have, and notes from my Bible reading (I've found that when I'm reading chapters such as Leviticus and Numbers, it is easy to stay focused when I'm thinking about the stuff I'm reading. )

Anyway, my eyes fell on some notes I took today while listening to a recording of a conference call for the Let. It. Go. study I'm participating in with Melissa Taylor's Online Bible studies.  The conference call focused a lot on unrealistic expectations, and setting the bar too high, and comparing our messy insides with someone else's cleaned up, masked outside. 

And then they said something profound.  I think it was Jill Savage that said it, the guest on the call. "If we can see ourselves as imperfect, broken, and in need of grace, we can see others as imperfect, broken, and in need of grace."

I am imperfect.  I make mistakes every day, sometimes every hour. I lose my temper and say mean things and act ugly.  I am broken.  Sometimes I am desperate because I am so broken.  I can't pick myself up.

But I wasn't meant to... because He has.  Through His grace, I am made perfect, and I am mended.  He is working a good grace.

But because He is perfecting me through His grace, I must extend grace. 

This is a message I'm hearing a lot lately. Grace... to others.  Grace.  Looking over ones faults.  Embracing the imperfections and the idiosyncrasies of others.  Grace... Marvelous grace. 

Grace for me... and for them... because His grace is sufficient. 

He does His best work in our imperfections, because in our weakness, He is strong.