I recently had an operation, and after a week when I was still mostly sleeping, I was getting frustrated and cross with myself. I felt I should be doing so much more. A friend texted me and reminded me of the importance of embracing this time of rest and learning to enjoy it. For a few days that message fell on deaf ears as I felt like I had missed the summer through illness. That same day a friend knocked on the door with a beautiful big gift bag. In it was a painting set, a jigsaw, a beautiful adult colouring book and some lovely colouring pens. It was like God was giving me a very clear hint of how to spend my recovery and to enjoy this time of rest. These were all things I loved to do, and were fun and relaxing things. So I decided to start by focusing on the colouring book. I spent many lovely hours sitting in front of a film or a quiz show colouring it in. I was so proud and pleased of my beautiful work after several weeks I had a number of pages completed.
You can imagine my horror when I heard a commotion in the dining room and heard my husband say to my son “Oh dear, what happened to the cup of tea?”. I rushed into help and saw tea gushing across the table – a tidal wave of beige engulfing everything in its way including the beautiful book which I had so painstakingly and lovingly coloured in. I wanted to get cross and angry that my son’s carelessness had stained my beautiful work, but as I reached to rescue the soggy book and looked at my son, I stopped. He looked very worried to see how I would react, it was clear he had realised he had made a mistake. “Sorry Mummy, I help clean Mummy, it’s okay, Mummy, don’t be sad”. The love and compassion in my heart for my son overcame my anger and frustration. I put a tea towel in my book and put it to dry. We then all calmly cleaned up and then sat down with Dom and talked to him. We said it was totally ok to have a “Whoops” moment – we all make them and that’s alright. We went further to explain that he needed to tell Mummy and Daddy so we can help him clean up and make things better. It was clear he had been afraid to tell us and therefore the tea had had longer to soak into things and get everywhere.
Later, I looked sadly at my book and the way the cold tea had seeped into some of the work causing colours to blur and leak onto other pages. I then flicked further in the book and was amazed to see some beautiful pristine white pages. And this whole thing got me thinking about God’s amazing grace: when we mess up and make mistakes He’s not there shouting and yelling at us angrily, but lovingly correcting us. He lovingly intervenes and covers us with grace.
I believe God created the universe beautifully, exquisitely and intricately but our sins ruin that perfection. After Adam and Eve’s chose to disobey God, their sin caused them to hide from God. We can be so overwhelmed with what we have got wrong that we feel we need to hide from Him, but the beauty of God’s grace is that instead of rejecting us, He sent Jesus to die for us, to take away our sin and to make us new.
We are human and mess up regularly, but we have this incredible gift of grace. When we simply come to Him and ask for forgiveness He takes us away from the stained pages where our sin has tarnished the beauty and gives us a brand new beginning. The Bible says that “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3v22-23.
Whatever we have done and no matter how much we feel we have messed up , always remember that God is a loving and heavenly father, waiting for us to call out to Him, waiting to lavish His grace on us. We simply have to go to him.
Today I want to share with you the lyric video for my song, ‘Grace of God’. This song looks at the importance of remembering God’s grace and that just as we are covered by His grace; we are also called to cover others with grace too.
I pray this blesses and encourages you.
Many blessings,
Kat