God of Grace

With the wedding coming up and getting down to the wire (59 days), it's starting to become apparent what's still left to do. We still need to officially reserve the church. Penciled in, but we just have to turn the form in. Plus, not exactly sure what the groomsmen will wear. Or me for that matter! Want to do a tweed jacket and stuff, but that might not happen. If it does, Goodwill's going to be to thank for it. Of course this is without trying to find a way to scientifically make money materialize from well...nothing! We don't really know what's going to happen with a honeymoon. Chicago was the plan for a long time, but bad financial planning has put that in jeopardy. So now it's maybe a tossup between Gatlinburg, Chicago, or staying at home.

Let's juxtapose this scenario against what's happening in my spiritual life. A couple weeks ago, a friend posted an article from an arts pastor who was about to leave a church in Austin, TX and head to another church in North Carolina or something. This article describes how humans create art because it illustrates grace. Here's the gist:

• God got fancy with the earth and created more than just enough to get by.
  
• For example: instead of having just one kind of fruit, we have a variety of fruits to choose from that all have a range of flavors. Not to mention God created a system in our bodies so those flavors could be enjoyed.
• Q: Why are flavors necessary, when most fruits do the job of sustaining us? A: They're not necessary, because that's all part of grace. While we need grace to not only live, but live like God intended, part of that gift is that we're given more than we need.

Which leads us to last week. One morning in the shower, barely awake, I prayed that God would intervene whenever I felt like I was going to say something about someone that was going to be hateful and/or ignorant. I'm bad about that. (Especially when I'm driving.) It's getting old, it's not helping anything, so I want to quit and have more productive, loving thoughts about people. Then after that prayer, I said another one, asking God to let me see His grace in action. I understood about the passive grace going on with fruits and nuts and how good they taste, but I wanted to see grace take an active role in my life.

So here's what went down. A week prior to this, our friend, who was going to photograph the wedding, told us that they had a family commitment that they couldn't postpone and wouldn't be able to make the wedding. They were going to do the wedding for free, as a wedding gift. So that meant now we'd have to pay someone to do our pictures. The cheapest offer we got was $250. That we didn't have. Eventually, Heather and I decided that we would just try and get my dad to take pictures from the pew during the ceremony and then he'd get pictures at the reception. Wouldn't be nice, fun ones...but it'd be better than nothing and better than paying for something we couldn't afford. Fast-forward to the day when I prayed for grace: we get an email from our friend, saying they got the dates mixed up and would be at our wedding with bells on!

That, friends, is God's grace. We didn't need a bona fide wedding photographer; we had my dad. I asked for grace, though, and I got it. When I asked for it, I thought God might let me find a quarter on the sidewalk or someone would give me some food they hadn't eaten. He surprised me with the photographer thing. I'd left it wide open for Him to do something cool. Wouldn't have even suspected that's what He would've come up with.

After all this, I'm no longer afraid to ask for excess like I used to be. For the longest time, it felt like if you were a Christian, you learned to live an ascetic life of minimalism and denying yourself. You learn to live on bread and water and use rocks for pillows. Not at all. I'm not advocating a pray to gain gospel here. I'm just saying that grace is more than a generic, bland word that's tossed around so freely in Christianity. There's a specific defintion and function to it. It's having God's favor and access to whatever we need and don't need in the physical, spiritual, and relational realms. I'm not going to pray for a brand new Lexus, but I'm going to pray for a nice honeymoon in Chicago. We don't need it. We could settle for a week without work at the apartment. But God has the resources to spare for a nice honeymoon in Chicago and all I need to do is ask.