The Graduate

Part of my heart is in a panic right now because my oldest daughter graduates from high school on Saturday and heads out by herself into God’s big, beautiful world.  It seems impossible that this event is immediate reality, and I join piles of parents who have stared at a commencement gown hanging in the closet and wondered how in the world this happened so fast.

All the sayings I’ve heard since her birth are true.  “Time flies!”  “The days may seem long but the years are short.”  “Cherish these moments because they won’t last.”  They didn’t, but, oh, were they delightful!  Bringing her home from the hospital, rocking her gently to sleep, seeing her wobbly first step, hearing her cute, silly voice, swinging her high at the orange playground, eating popsicles in the pool, piling in the van to visit grandparents, listening to her laugh with her sisters, serving pizza at her school on Fridays, watching her sing in the fifth grade play, cheering as she pitched a softball, kicked a soccer ball, and slammed a tennis ball, applauding her wins on the swim team, beaming as she led in the praise team, gasping as she was crowned homecoming queen, dressing her up for dinners and dances, roasting hot dogs in the back yard, popping caramel corn for family nights, making brownies and cookies for her friends, and smiling with joy as her sweet, soft heart grew larger and larger to love lots and lots of people in lots and lots of ways.  So many cherished moments.  So many precious memories. 

And now the pages of the calendar have flipped again and again and again, and the occasion of her graduation has finally arrived.

To be honest, my angst has much more to do with my faults in the past than her path in the future.  In less than three months, she’ll be heading off to a public university where pitfalls and perils abound, but where God is also busy transforming hearts and changing lives and where I’m confident she will grow in grace and get to know Him so much more.  So what I fret about is not what she will do but what I haven’t done.  

I haven’t taught her enough about cooking, sewing, and cleaning.  I haven’t trained her how to change a tire, jump-start a car, or replace a faulty battery.  I fear the times I was short, snippy, and sour will crowd her memory more than the moments I was caring and kind.  I feel uncertain that I showed her enough good and unsure that I shared enough God. I should have prayed with her more, read with her more, studied with her more, taught her more, told her more, memorized more Scripture with her, and made more time to just be with her and enjoy her laugh, her tears, her joys, and her love.   

Now the time for such is short, and I must trust that the God who created her, called her, redeemed her, and loves her more than I ever could will fill in the gaps with His grace and will guide my girl as she goes.   I want her to make the most of her college years—to meet new people, build fresh friendships, join a campus ministry, find an awesome church, yell for touchdowns, cry for break-ups, cheer for first dates (and maybe second ones too!), go on late-night donut runs, early morning training runs, and even attend class and earn a useful degree.  Someday, not too soon, I hope she meets an amazing man and becomes a blissfully married wife and an absolutely amazed mom, but most of all, more than all, I want my girl to love Jesus—passionately, purposefully, and completely, and I hope that above all the things I have taught or she has caught, she knows first and best that Jesus is life.

And so on Saturday my daughter will don her cap and gown, parade across the stage, and receive a piece of paper that says she is ready to start the next stage of life.  If based only on what her parents have put in, I would say, “I hope so,” but because God’s unfailing love and unrelenting grace, I can say, with joyful heart and teary eyes, “I know so.”

Go, my precious girl.  Go boldly and be all God’s.

And know that your mom dearly loves you.

Grace

Today I am simply wallowing in grace.

Due to reasons that sound more like excuses, I haven’t read enough, prayed enough, or praised enough during the past few weeks.  My quiet times have been quick verses squeezed in between too little sleep and too much schedule, and my supplications have been sincere but short.  In other words, if I were checking the boxes on my Sunday School offering envelope (some of you know exactly what I’m talking about!), I might as well not even pick up the pen.

But here’s the good news:  I’m still God’s—just as much as if I had memorized all the Minor Prophets, fasted four days straight, and had a prayer and petition marathon.  God doesn’t love me any less for not doing those things, and He wouldn’t love me any more if I had done them. Of course there are benefits and blessings of intentional intimacy and connection with God (just as there are for every relationship we cherish and nurture), but I’m not any “more” God’s when I do those good things than when I don’t, and for such grace I am thankful on days like today.  And so I wallow.

Some of you may never have had the privilege of seeing a pig wallow in person.  It’s not always a pretty sight as a hog hunkers down in the mud, rolling to and fro on his back with his stumpy legs swaying side to side in the air and his head grinding back and forth in the mire to help him sink deeper and deeper into the dirty delight.  But the pig isn’t going for pretty; he’s aiming for comfort, contentment, and the feeling of being securely surrounded by something that feels amazingly good.  For a pig, that’s grime.  For me, it’s grace.

And so today, though it’s not a pretty sight, I hunker down in God’s grace, not standing on my own actions or attitudes but flat on my back looking up to Him, and I sink deeper and deeper into His divine delight.  And because I know that even on days when I do all the right and good things, it’s still His grace and His grace alone that makes me His and keeps me His, I am comforted, content, and feel securely surrounded by something that feels amazingly good—grace.  Amazing race that is greater than all our sin, and astounding grace that is bigger than all our best. 

Come wallow with me.  Grace is a great place to be.

Over But Not Out

“He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple area.”  Mark 11:15

I spent the morning helping students figure out pretend paychecks.  Given an assigned job and salary, they were to determine net pay after appropriate FICA and income tax deductions.  For my class, this process was not as simple as it seems, and let’s just say you should be glad my kids aren’t the ones writing your check at the end of the month!  Many ended up short-changed because they took shortcuts in their computations.  Due to not doing the right things the right way, they took home way less than they should have.

My high schoolers were playing pretend, but in real life grown-ups often do the same thing, and it makes God sad.  And sometimes mad. Just ask the guys at the temple who found themselves stumbling backward as Jesus flipped over their tables and flung away their profits.  Ask the peddlers who got tossed out when they used the temple terrace as a thoroughfare.  Some of the merchants were shortchanging those who came to worship—swapping foreign currency for local cash and charging an ungodly fee.  Others had found a shortcut to the other side of town and carried their loot through the courtyard with no regard for the Lord.  “On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there.  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple area.  And as he taught them, he said, ‘Is it not written:  “My house will be called a house of prayer”? but you have made it a “den of thieves”’”(Mk 11:15-17).  How tragic—these men were as close to God’s presence as possible, and yet it made no difference in their lives.  Though they made daily trips to the temple, by not doing the right things the right way, they took home way less than they should have.  

These days, due to valiant grace and a torn-in-two veil, no man-made structure houses God’s holy presence.  We do. “Don’t you know that you are the God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”(I Cor 3:16).  If a building made of blocks was meant to be a “house of prayer,” how much more our very hearts made holy by His precious blood??  And, yet, in spite of the fact that God’s Spirit isn’t just near us but in us, we often shortchange our worship and shortcut our praise.  At times we undervalue God’s grace and underestimate His mercy.  During others, we carry on with little regard for the Lord, and though we are more than close to His presence, it makes only a minor difference in our attitudes and actions.  It is then that we rob both God and ourselves, and it is then that He steps in and starts turning things over.  God’s cleaning up and clearing out can seem to make a mess at first, but His purging purifies our spirits and profits our souls with the bountiful blessings of being His and His alone.  

When we don’t do the right things the right way, we end up with way less than we should, but God’s rich mercy won’t let us set up shop in sin for long. Our hearts are His home, and He desires for them to be holy.

God may turn us over, but He will never toss us out, and grace that great deserves a good long prayer of praise.