A day full of sin, death, grace, and angels:

When I awoke this morning, the hard drive in my headbegan to whir.  About the first thing I remember thinking was, "It can't be onlyTuesday."

It's been a full week already.

I know all the Theological reasons for starting the week with the Lord's Day, but in my little preacher world,Sunday is the end of the week.  Monday - Saturday is, in large part, spent getting ready for Sunday.  Sundaynight, Kathy and I exhale and crash.  So, when I woke this morning I was only thinking of one day.  

Yesterday was a microcosm of life on this sin-cursed planet.  Kathy and I were with a family, at a crisis point in the their lives.  Sin has done its work and these dear friends of ours were left to sort through the pieces and put things back together.  Don't get the idea its hopeless, far from it.  We can see God's grace shining through.  I'm expecting great things!

Part of that grace--much of it, in fact--is packaged in
human flesh.  A couple of other friends are reaching out to this family with love-in-shoe-leather.  It's the kind of thing angels do.  When you are at the end of your rope, they show up to 

 help.  

In the midst of that, I got word that my mom had died.  It was no surprise.  In fact the surprise was that she was still with us yesterday morning.  There was no "I better sit down." kind of shock, like there was when my dad died with a sudden heart attack, just a dull lump that settled somewhere in my lower abdomen, and wouldn't go away.  Again grace appeared.  God is good.

Miles were traveled, emails sent, phone calls made,conferences had, and plans put in place.  Surely it must be Thursday or Friday.

Life is not a smooth line.  It's like looking at the wave pattern of a speech, full of peaks and valleys.  Across those jagged lines that make up the whispers and the ear piercing screams of life, I find one constant.  I don't know how others live without.  Call it a homing beacon, a steady light, a constant tone, maybe, as a song says, it is the "rhythm of his 

Be Still and Know - Steven Curtis Chapman - Worship Video w/lyrics

unfailing heart of love."

 

Yesterday was full.  I'm glad I can say it was not only full of stuff that happened, I can also look back and see an abundance of God's grace.

 

It's STTA.

 

 

(The little angel at the top?  My mom made I don't know how many of them.  They are around the world.  This morning it is a pretty good reminder of God's grace.)