It’s not a girls name, but it could be, and I’m sure there are a few out there! It’s simple really. I wrote this in the month of April and its about thoughts I encountered about a framed print I had just unpacked and unwrapped.
From a physical aspect – My man and I had just moved into our new home in Tennessee and the ‘joys’ of unpacking, allocating everything, putting together, discarding, and wondering where everything was going to go, was catching up to me. I was working on an interior time clock that said I needed to put our house in order. The end of April was approaching fast! My man didn’t understand, but with two house guests coming for one week, followed by four house guests the next week, I was on a mission! I love our home, they way it looks, its comfort and embrace. I want all our visitor’s – family and friends – to feel a deep measure of rest that comes from being in a place that has been prepared with the utmost care, comfort and love.
From a spiritual aspect: As I looked at the print of “The Four” (by Tricia Robinson) I realized that each one of these womens stories have impacted my life in one way or another, one more than the other’s. The four, from entirely different backgrounds, with such different stories to tell, yet here they were bound together by one thing in common. They were grandmothers! Tamar. Rahab. Ruth. Bathesheba. Grandmothers in the family line of Jesus, that is!! Broken women, who walked in the endless measure of His grace. Whose stories have been forever told bringing hope and healing to so many. To quote author Ann Voskamp: “Some were prostitutes, some involved in affairs, some lied and were truly not the starry-eyed perfect princesses. But God chose them …. four broken women – women who felt like outsiders, like has beens, like never beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unoticed, uncherished, unappreciated. Women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go. Women who had thoughts of giving up. And Jesus claims exactly these who are wandering and wondering, and wounded, and worn out as His. He grafts you into His family line and His story and His heart, and He gives you His Name, His lineage, His righteousness.”
This is Grace. Powerful, tender, beautiful. Grace, the gift, we receive from God. Grace, the gift from God, that we pass on to others. Grace. That is what I want to be found, in its deepest measures of rest, for all who come under our roof.
I want others to know of “… the battle’s we’ve won” (The Story I’ll Tell sung by Naomi Raines). Of how His grace has covered my life as it did these grandmothers.
One verse from that song goes “and I’ll testify of the SEAS THAT WE’VE CROSSED, the waters You parted, the WAVES THAT I WALKED, singing oh-oh-oh, my God did not fail.” Another goes “And all that’s left is highest praises, so sing hallelujah to the Rock of Ages”.
How great is His grace …”For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. For now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I AM FULLY KNOWN” (1 Corinthians 13:12) “And I’ll testify of the battles You’ve won, how you were my Portion when there wasn’t enough ….. singing, oh-oh-oh my God did not fail.”
His grace. My greatest gift.
