Testimony of Grace

All the paths of YHWH are grace and truth
To those keeping His covenant and His testimonies.
Psalm 25:10

"Why me, God?"

The question was thrust heavenward countless times throughout my younger years. As a child, as a youth, as I entered adulthood, life piled distress upon insult upon injury, over and over. And though I resolved to ever avoid causing pain to others, I nonetheless failed on countless occasions. And I wondered why I'd been cursed, oblivious to the curse upon every one of us—oblivious to the Grace available.

And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
~ John 1:16-17 (NKJV)

Truth rushed into my life when the Bible I'd only known as "The Good Book" was personally introduced to me as the Word of God. I knew at once, in the deepest core of my soul, that no Truth I'd ever heard was truer. Grace became visible a few years later, when I surrendered myself to the Lord and His Holy Spirit entered my life in a big way.

"There, but for the grace of God, go I."
~ Unknown

"Why me, God?"

When the Lord got a hold of me twenty-four years ago, I started asking the same question with a completely different perspective. Why did He reach out to me? Why did He enable me to know Him? Why was The Way revealed off the path of destruction and onto the path of life?

"He who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger."
~ Japanese Proverb

The world is filled with the injured and the injurers, none of us wholly escaping being both. Seasons of distress and insult and injury return. What makes the difference between the abused who becomes abuser, and the abused who becomes healer? How does any person choose between taking all they can get, and giving all they are? Where is the path to the place that the deed intended for evil is transformed into good?

Grace is the only answer; Grace provides the response to all that has gone by, and the assurance of hope through all that is yet to come.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
~ John 1:14 (NKJV)

By New Year's Day, Christmas gifts have been folded into the ordinary fabric of our lives. But The Gift celebrated by Christmas—the fullness of Grace and Truth that is God Himself become a Man of flesh so He might dwell among us—becomes ordinary in the new year only if I fail to worship, only if I fail to give testimony of Grace.

Thank You, Father, for sending Jesus to Earth, and for keeping Him here through Your Spirit. For Your name's sake, my Lord, please keep Him most extraordinary in our lives, worthy of all worship and testimony.

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Copyright 2012, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.