Grace's Song

Psalm 90:14-17

New Living Translation (NLT)

 ¹⁴ Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,
      so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.
 ¹⁵ Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!
      Replace the evil years with good.
 ¹⁶ Let us, your servants, see you work again;
      let our children see your glory.
 ¹⁷ And may the Lord our God show us his approval
      and make our efforts successful.
      Yes, make our efforts successful!

Five years ago, flu-ravaged and twisted up in a waiting room of ICU surrounded by True Believers, the vigil began. Minutes passed into hours and a sun rose and set several times, unaware. We waited, we visited, we prayed, we watched his breath rise with anticipation only to dwindle with despair. Grace's song opened the Heavens.

Surgeon came, took the challenge when no one would. But I knew already. Grace's song hummed the second chorus. 

Husband walked toward me, that long hallway, wretched in pain to shake his head and look to me in the eyes of my soul, trying to grab back the words...but Grace's Song rolled the stone.

The world turned dark and the earth shook and my heart and brain crashed together in a head-on collision. Fatal but not final. Grace's song swept up the debris. 

In these five years, Grace's Song surrounds me. Comfort, understanding, provision, fellowship, joy and purpose hold my thoughts and my emotions in place, capturing words of faith and love that wedge the stone away. 

Grace's song sings Resurrection. Grace's song sings Eternal Life. Grace's Song sings Hope.  

Grace's song never dies. 

Thank you Lord for every note of Grace's song and may the symphony You are conducting in my life be a sweet rhapsody of everlasting Love. 

Pothole Progress

Romans 5:3-5 (NIV)

 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

While walking across a busy street, I stepped around a pothole to avoid tripping up. Not any old pothole, but one that stood out because of it's location, in the white area of the painted crosswalk--but more so because of it's shape. Of course, being four days before Valentine's Day, God's timely inspiration is perfect. 

As we experience our own sanctification process in the Lord, (learning, applying and growing) for our lives, He never promises us perfection while still on this earth. Sometimes we get a little beat up and run over. What He does promise us is a continued presence of the Spirit, walking with us side by side through our trampled hearts and heavy sorrows that break up our surface. Some of our wounds remain, but when we let God work this out, our own "potholes" begin to take on His shape--His purpose. 


Sending out a "work order" of prayer, the Holy Spirit fills us up with Hope, smoothing out that which left broken, just might puncture those who are joined with us in our daily commutes.


 Don't allow your own  "potholes" to cause someone else to swerve off an eternal course, or yourself, to veer off into a ditch of bitterness. Allow God to refill you with his healing grace and shape your rough edges into a heart of testimony. 


Lord, may my own rough roads show your handiwork and your grace-filled love fill up my "potholes" so that others can walk beside me, sharing in Your glory. Amen.