forgiveness

May 9, 2014

Whatever You Do, Don’t Cartwheel with Gum in Your Hair

When I was a kid, I didn’t so much walk down the hallway at home. Instead, I cartwheeled from one end to the other, or, if I was feeling fancy, I walked on my hands.

Mom was okay with this, under two conditions:

1) I had to look behind me before I launched into cartwheel mode. (Sorry for all the times I kicked you, Little Brother.)

2) I was not, under any circumstances, to tumble with gum in my mouth.

I cartwheeled to my heart’s content without incident for some time . . . until that fateful afternoon when I was six. I was chewing gum while turning cartwheels, and sure enough, the bright green wad fell out of my mouth and landed squarely in my bangs.

I raced to the bathroom, closing the door behind me so I could assess the damage. I tugged, I yanked, I wrestled, but to no avail. The gum would not budge.

I can’t let Mom find out! In a panic, I raced through my options until I finally hit on a stroke of genius.

Aha! I’ll cut the gum out with the nail clippers! Mom will never know.

It was a foolproof plan . . . until, that is, I opened the bathroom door. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that Mom noticed immediately—whether because of the large notch of hair missing from my forehead or because of the guilt etched on my face, I’ll never know.

Mom and I had a heart-to-heart at that point about what I’d done and why the rules were there in the first place.

Then Mom gave me a hug, tussling my freshly hacked bangs. “Now what are we going to do about picture day tomorrow?”

It was only then that the magnitude of my transgression struck me. Between sobs, I managed to squeak out a dramatic pronouncement: “OH NO! I CANNOT go to school tomorrow!”

But as usual, Mom came to the rescue. Armed with authentic haircutting scissors, a curling iron, and some well-placed barrettes, she managed to make me look somewhat presentable for the school photo.

As I reflect on Mother’s Day, I’m reminded how much God’s love looks like mother-love. Like a mom, God knows precisely how we’re going to fail from the very start, despite his fair warnings. Then, after we come to him in repentance and he talks through the consequences with us, he holds us and comforts us—and even helps us fix the mess we’ve made.

And later, after our bangs have grown out and the school pictures come in, I have to believe he shares a gentle laugh with us too.

So happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thanks for faithfully showing me what God’s love looks like.

***

In honor of Mother’s Day, do you have a story to share about how your mom or another woman in your life has shown you God’s love?

If you comment below, you’ll be eligible to win a free copy of Lisa-Jo Baker’s new book, Surprised by Motherhood.

October 22, 2013

Gospel Story: Mike & Amy

Two of my great passions in life are helping other people share their stories and seeing God’s extraordinary grace at work in ordinary people. So when I was given the opportunity to be part of the Gospel Stories project at my church, it felt like a beautiful collision of those passions.

Today I’d like to share Mike and Amy’s inspiring story with you.

In those quiet moments, when you stand back and take an honest look at yourself—the things you regret, the ways you’ve fallen short, the people you’ve let down—what words flash before your eyes? Selfish? Dishonest? Defeated? Unforgiveable? Maybe you’re afraid that your most significant relationships have been fractured beyond repair, and even worse, you’re too far gone for God to rescue.

Mike has been there. He got to a point where he thought his marriage was over and he was beyond hope. But then, after he got a tangible glimpse of God’s grace through this wife, Amy, Mike came to see himself as God sees him: forgiven.

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. . . . But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. —Titus 3:3-5

You can watch the video of Mike and Amy sharing their incredible story here.

August 9, 2013

On Grace and Ketchup

Forgive me for being sacrilegious, but every time I sing “Jesus Paid It All,” I can’t help but think about ketchup.

My husband played his bass at church last week, and we sang the lines of that old classic spiritual:

Jesus paid it all
All to him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow

While other people were no doubt musing about spiritual things like substitutionary atonement, I was instantly transported to the teenage version of myself. On a big yellow school bus, no less.

I was sixteen, and just a few months prior, I’d made the first major clothing purchase of my life: a beautiful brown suede leather jacket. I’d had my eye on it for a long time, and after saving up my heard-earned babysitting money, I finally made the purchase.

leathercoat

I felt pretty cool wearing it to high school (even if I was mortified to still be riding the bus). One morning I was minding my own business, doing some finishing touches on my homework on the way to school, when all of a sudden I heard a sickening splat. I looked down at the arm of my precious caramel-colored jacket. It was smeared with ketchup, the casualty of crossfire between two punky boys who were apparently having a post-breakfast food fight.

I was, in all the drama of teenagerdom, devastated.

Later Mom and I took the coat to the dry cleaner’s. The lady matter-of-factly told me they’d be able to get the ketchup out but the coat would never be the same. I was crushed. But I also knew I wouldn’t be able to stand smelling vaguely like McDonald’s for any length of time, so I handed over the jacket.

They were right. The coat was never the same again. It lost its velvety finish, and the discolored spot where the ketchup hit its mark never went away.

When I think about the stain of my sin, I have the same fear—that the stain will never come out. And that even if does, I’ll never be the same again. So I hold back from going to the only one who can make me clean again. I try in vain to mask the ketchupy stench that trails me wherever I go.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Jesus’ cleansing abilities are infinitely more effective than the dry cleaner’s. Sin has indeed left its crimson mark on us, but it’s no match for his forgiveness. He washes us white as snow, and leaves us better than he found us.

“Come now, let’s settle this,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
I will make them as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson,
I will make them as white as wool.”
—Isaiah 1:18

Whatever marred spot you are trying to hide, it’s time to come and settle this. There is no sin too great, no stain too deep, that he cannot wipe it out.

But even so, if you ever find yourself on the school bus with punky kids, I’d advise you to leave the leather jacket at home.

October 24, 2012

Like Amish Peanut Butter

I have a weakness for peanut butter. On any given day, you’d likely find four jars of the stuff in our pantry: generic creamy, chunky, the brand-name “good stuff”… and a backup.

So when I received homemade Amish peanut butter from one of the authors my company works with, you can imagine my delight. Just one spoonful was enough for me to know I’d be ruined for all other peanut butter for the rest of time. In all my years of history with peanut butter, I’d never tasted such gooey, creamy, sweet deliciousness. The fact that it was made from scratch by a Pennsylvania woman in a bonnet only added to its divinity.

As I was eating my toasted peanut butter sandwich, I was reminded of the quote a friend of mine uses as part of her signature at the bottom of e-mails:

God spreads his grace thick and gloppy…the way a child spreads peanut butter.

It struck me as I took another bite that something like Amish peanut butter isn’t meant to be skimped on or rationed out. It isn’t meant to be analyzed for calorie count or obsessed over for exactly which spot on my hips it’s bound to end up.

Forgive me if this sounds a touch sacrilegious, but maybe my friend’s quote is right—maybe grace isn’t so different from peanut butter. God spreads his grace with such extravagance that it gets messy and smears all over us, until the globs rub off onto other people too.

When Jesus interacted with people, he was often accused by the religious folk of being too generous with grace. On one occasion when he was eating dinner with a group of people, he was approached by an “immoral woman” (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus didn’t condone the choices she’d made, but he extended forgiveness to her nonetheless. Forgiveness of the thick and gloppy variety.

I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love.

—Luke 7:47

Having received extravagant forgiveness, she responded with extravagant gratitude:

She brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

—Luke 7:37-38

No matter how hard we try, we’ll never deserve God’s extravagant grace. But we do have a choice about how we’ll receive it. Will we clench our teeth and portion it out over so many bread crumbs? Will we nibble each bite guiltily, washing it down with the sour milk of regret?

Or will we take in the gift the way it was meant to be received, with joy and abundance and overflowing gratitude, the way the woman in the book of Luke did?

May my peanut butter communion remind me of how God intends his grace to be: thick and gloppy. Like Amish peanut butter.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

October 16, 2012

Come as You Are

When I was a kid, my favorite room in the house was the formal living room, for one simple reason: there was no furniture in it—just cushy white carpet and lots of space to cartwheel to my heart’s content.

The only thing in the room was a shelf with Mom’s Precious Moments collection in the corner. The rule was that I could do as many tumbling stunts as I wanted to, as long as I was careful not to veer into the corner and knock over the Precious Moments.

I was on a roll one day, going for a record number of cartwheels in a row, when I heard the stomach-churning sound of shattering glass. I looked down and, to my horror, saw that one of Mom’s beloved figurines had shattered into a pile of pointy shards.

There was no way I could tell Mom, I decided. I needed to fix this first. My initial stroke of genius was to reconstruct the figurine with tape, but I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. The next obvious choice: I’d simply make her a new one. I snuck outside to gather twigs for the figurine’s arms and a little rock for the face, figuring I could paint the features on later. But as I tried to stick it all together with Silly Putty, I burst into tears. No paint job was going to salvage this sucker.

And so I did the only thing left to do: I went to Mom. I confessed. With lip quivering, I held out the handful of glass pieces and the lumpy-looking attempt at a replica. The hard truth was, I knew I’d never be able to pull it all together on my own.

As I’m reading the Gospels, I’m struck by what a ragtag band of followers Jesus had. These people who left everything to follow Jesus weren’t the spiritual elites of their day or the morally polished crowd. They didn’t have it all together. They were, in fact, in various states of mess.

There the fishermen (Luke 5:1-11), who got little respect in their culture—likely the rabbinical school dropouts. There were the tax collectors—the sleazy guys who ripped off their own people to get a bigger cut for themselves (Matthew 9:9). And there were the women of questionable reputation who didn’t do much for Jesus’ image (John 4).

When the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

—Mark 2:15-17

These people didn’t try to put themselves together before they came to Jesus; they knew that would be as futile as a child refusing to confess until she fixed the pricey collectible she’d broken.

I love that God doesn’t ask us to pull our act together before we come to him. We come as we are, and he changes who we are.

As I see myself in this lineup of people who came to Jesus, with their hands full of the messes they’d made, I’m reminded of one of the verses of the old classic hymn “Come Ye Sinners”:

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

If we wait to come to Jesus until we’re better, until we have our act together, we’ll never come at all.

When I went to Mom with the broken pieces of her figurine, she hugged me and extended forgiveness to me. Here she was the one who had been hurt, but she was consoling me. When we come to God in repentance, he does the same for us. He wraps us in his arms and wipes away our wrongs. And he alone can put the precious pieces back together again.

Today, if you find yourself compelled to try to clean yourself up before you come to God, I encourage you to take your mess and come to him. Just as you are. And know that he will accept you. Just as you are.

I beg you, do not tarry till you’re better.

Come now. Come as you are.

July 3, 2012

Are some people beyond the reach of grace?

One of my relatives has a certain qualm about heaven that he airs anytime the topic of heaven comes up. This relative (who shall remain nameless, on the off chance he decides to run for political office or enroll in seminary at some point) has a good grasp of grace, but there’s one person he can’t reconcile being admitted into the pearly gates.

“What if Hitler had a deathbed conversion and squeaked his way in to heaven?” he inevitably asks. “And what if it turns out my mansion is right next door to his?”

I know he’s mostly joking when he says this—or perhaps trying to incite a heated discussion, as he is wont to do—but there’s an underlying truth to his complaint. Everyone’s in favor of grace, but most of us apply asterisks to it, deeming certain people past its reach. I can accept that Jesus’ blood is enough to cover the sins I have committed, but surely not the child abuser, the serial rapist, the person who invokes intentional harm on me or the people I love.

I have to admit that since my Flannel Graph days, I haven’t had much sympathy for the prophet Jonah. What with getting himself thrown off a ship, being swallowed by a giant fish, and sulking in that big stomach-aquarium for three days, Jonah has a tragically comic feel about him. It’s easy to look at him and think, Duh, Jonah, it would have saved you a lot of hassle, not to mention seaweed ingestion, if you’d just gone to Nineveh the first time around.

But as I learned more about the city he was called to preach to, I realized that if I’d been in his shoes, I would have likely run off in the other direction too. Only maybe I would have stayed on dry land, seeing as I get a little queasy around digestive juices.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, one of Israel’s fiercest enemies at the time. Assyria was constantly at war, vying to become the dominant superpower in the ancient Middle East. The Assyrians were feared for their aggression in battle and their tendency to force the people in the lands they conquered to disperse to various parts of the Assyrian empire. It’s no wonder Jonah wasn’t especially excited to pay them a house call.

But eventually, with all the grace of a pouting toddler, Jonah delivered his message to the people of Nineveh. It was quite possibly the world’s shortest sermon:

“Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!”

—Jonah 3:4

Shockingly, the people responded. They immediately repented over their sin, with fasting and deep mourning. And God, true to his character, had mercy on them, sparing them from the judgment they deserved.

And Jonah? Well, I guess he felt like he got to heaven only to find that Hitler was his next-door neighbor.

“Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.”

—Jonah 4:2-3

In God’s eyes, no one is beyond the reach of grace. Not a wicked city. Not a pouty, stubborn prophet. Not a cruel dictator. Not even a sinner like me.

June 19, 2012

Tuesday’s Child

When I was little, I was secretly envious of my sister. Not because she grew up eating ice cream on a regular basis or because she got to stay up late and play bridge with Mom and “the ladies” while I was in bed. No, it was all because of the day of her birth.

Meghan was born on a Friday, and according to the little nursery rhyme, that meant she was “loving and giving.” And here’s the thing: she was. Even from a young age, we had to keep a close eye on her piggy bank because she was liable to hand the whole thing over to the nearest person she deemed in need.

I was born on a Tuesday, which allegedly meant I was “full of grace.” At age ten, I took that to mean I made elegant, ballet-like movements. And while it’s true that I was enrolled in gymnastics, I had kicked way too many people while doing cartwheels in the hallway for anyone to believe there was anything akin to grace happening there. But being loving and giving—now that felt like something a little more practical.

I was watching the trials for the Olympics the other day, and I was struck by the undeniable grace of the divers in the platform event. As I watched, it hit me that maybe physical grace and spiritual grace have more in common than I realized. In both cases, whether you’re diving off the high dive or forgiving someone who has wronged you, there’s a kind of apparent effortlessness to it.

Although the one doing the gracing knows how many bruises and tears have brought them to this point, the spectators only see something beautiful. For an action to be truly graceful, there can’t be a sense of “Look at me!” or “Hey, everyone, check out how hard this is!” No, to be “full of grace” is to do something hard and make it look easy.

As with diving, grace-giving can feel a lot like standing on a 33-foot ledge, looking down into the swirling water below. That is to say, terrifying. And neither of these Olympic tasks happens automatically—they both require a lot of practice. But grace is worth the effort. It is so extraordinary, so compelling, that the watching world takes note when it happens.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this little proverb lately—so simple, but definitely not easy:

A gracious woman gains respect.

—Proverbs 11:16

So today I want to put my toes right up to the ledge and dive headfirst into grace. I’ll never be a platform diver, but with a little practice, I just may start looking more like the Tuesday’s child I was intended to be.

May 11, 2012

Graceful Remembering

At a conference I attended recently, I heard a firsthand account of graceful remembering. An author named Margot Starbuck told the story of her childhood and her quest for the Father-love she never had from her earthly fathers.

Margot experienced the double whammy of abandonment early in her life, having been given up for adoption as a baby and then having her stepfather succumb to alcoholism and leave the family when she was a young girl. These abandonments from the very people who were meant to reflect the parental love of God sent her on a desperate search for the true nature of God’s love, which she chronicles in her memoir, The Girl in the Orange Dress.

What struck me most when I read Margot’s story wasn’t so much the tragic nature of her memories, but what she left out.

She never shies away from the truth or the pain of what she went through, and she doesn’t excuse her father and her stepfather for their absence. But the focus in her remembering is on the way she grew from her losses and the mysterious good God brought out of them. She offers both men the kind of forgiveness and grace they don’t deserve. But then again, that’s what grace, by its very definition, is all about.

I was equally amazed when I read the funeral song David wrote for his nemesis, King Saul. David had been nothing but faithful to Saul all his life, fighting for him, defending his honor, protecting him against assassination attempts. By way of thanks, Saul tried to kill and him and then drove him out of the country.

And yet this is how David remembered Saul after his death:

How beloved and gracious were Saul and Jonathan!
They were together in life and in death. . . .
Oh, how the mighty heroes have fallen!
—2 Samuel 1:23, 25

I imagine David hadn’t forgotten all the evil Saul had inflicted on him when he was alive. But when it came to his final reckoning, David chose to remember with grace rather than bitterness.

Just as Margot did.

Surprisingly, Margot told us that her book has served as a reconciliation tool of sorts between her and her dad. Her father, the very one she wrote about abandoning her, now gives her book to just about everyone he meets.

How beloved and gracious, indeed.

February 3, 2012

The Grace of Forgetfulness

I’m currently reading a memoir by a woman named Jill Price, who has an unusual condition called hyperthymestic syndrome. Which is the technical way of saying she can’t forget. Anything. If you asked her about any given day in 1970, she’d be able to tell you what day of the week it was—and precisely what she had for breakfast.

As much as I want to pull out my hair when I leave my lunch on the kitchen counter or when I completely whiff on someone’s birthday, I realize there is grace in being able to forget. On a merely practical level, it’s a mercy that some of those details (like decades-old breakfast menus) can exit quietly and unceremoniously out the mental back door. Otherwise our brains would be so cluttered with nonessentials that we’d never be able to stay focused on weightier matters.

On a spiritual level, I think God works in a similar way. He takes those wounds and painful memories from times we’ve been hurt and, through the process of time, his Spirit, and godly people in our lives, enables those painful incidents to fade into the background.

Joseph, the Old Testament hero, had plenty of wounds that hounded his memory. His own brothers had sold him into slavery, and he ended up a captive in a faraway country, where he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. There should have been plenty of bitter juice to go around. But it’s interesting to note what he named his firstborn son once his life started looking up again: Manasseh, which means “God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in my father’s family” (Genesis 41:51).

I have to wonder, though: if Joseph had truly moved on, would he really need to name his son “I have forgotten”? In a sense, every time he called to his son was a reminder of the family he’d allegedly left in the rearview mirror.

So what do we do when we can’t forget?

In those cases, it just may be that God has something redemptive up his sleeve. God wasn’t finished with Joseph when it came to those brothers he claimed to have forgotten. When he met up with them years later, there were no vengeful daytime talk show moments. Instead, there was a teary, grace-filled reunion—and a reconciliation that was more beautiful than amnesia ever could be.

If there is a wound in your life right now that is burned into your consciousness, go ahead and ask God for the grace of forgetfulness. But if it’s slow in coming, don’t get discouraged. Because it just may be that God is going to so bring something out of this you’ll never want to forget.

January 17, 2012

Christmas Is Coming (well, sort of…)

Okay, I know Christmas is over…I finally took down the tree and (for the most part) curbed my habit of belting out holiday tunes. I was doing pretty well until it snowed, and let’s just say I relapsed.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is Over the Rhine’s “Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming),” and every time I see the white stuff out the window, I can’t help but sing it. The song starts out less chipper than you might expect for Christmas lyrics:

So it’s been a long year
Every new day brings one more tear
Till there’s nothing left to cry

But there’s this lovely thread of redemption that runs through the song, all the more poignant for its haunting opening:

Darlin’, the snow is falling
Falling like forgiveness from the sky

If there was ever a nature metaphor for grace, it has to be snow. One moment the world is drab and brown and lifeless, and in an instant it’s transformed—clean, pure, new. And unexpectedly beautiful. Everything is covered—from hulking buildings to the tiniest twigs.

And so it is with grace. When it falls, it covers everything—from our biggest, most glaring sins to the less obtrusive ones we try to hide.

So get ready, darlin’. Grace is falling…it’s falling like snowflakes from the sky.

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
—Psalm 51:7