Sunday Grace

Last weekend, we were out of town so I missed posting my Sunday Grace. In Seattle, we hooked up with some old friends for dinner and also had a blast re-discovering Seattle.

I'm beginning to get a little ansy for Spring. I've dragged out my bike and have been riding to work on nice days. I've been going to Portland Nursery more often. For valentine's, we bought two espalier fruit trees, apple and pear. I'll blog about them later because they are so cool and deserve a posting of their own. I have my seed packets and they are bursting to become real live plants. We've begun the re-design of our backyard to make room for chickens, which makes me giddy (yippee!).

Today in church, the series on grace continued. The pastor talked about grace as being unmerited and unlimited. In other words, God gives us His grace through His Son and there is nothing we can do to earn it and He does it freely and abundantly. This is a hard concept for our culture. We are always striving (that's me), we have do something, we have to be "better", we have to "do" better to earn His favor. There is always a strong pull toward thinking this will get us into God's good graces and earn His love. Because we fail at being perfect, this leads to shame and disappointment. The beauty is that God is not asking for perfection. He wants to be with us in our brokeness and show us how to live without shame or striving or doing. I'm working on allowing myself to sit in his grace, to soak it up and relish it. Hopefully, He will begin to transform my heart and mind along the way. I'm still workin' on it.

Sammy