I live and move and believe in a state of Grace, each day. The fact that I believe is a testimony to God’s great mercy and each day I am awed and greatly humbled by that fact. What makes one person believe and strive to live out a faith and another not give it a thought? I have always thought that people usually die just the way they lived unless a miracle happens. We are all born under the same stars but under many different sets of circumstances. I have seen people make it out of unbearable conditions of life and come to belief in God and salvation in Jesus. And I have seen others with seemingly every opportunity crash right through life, leaving all kinds of destruction in their wake and not ever look up and the sky and wonder “who put all that there.”

It’s amazing really.

We went to visit Joyce at the Care Facility yesterday, and it’s always a grim reminder of mortality. Two ladies were sitting out in the patio in 100 hundred plus degrees puffing away on their cigarettes. Both their lips were moving, cigarettes bobbing up and down, spilling ash as they talked. There but for the grace go any of us……….I always find myself praying a lot when I go there and the prayer is just under my breath………”Oh dear Jesus don’t let me live this long.” What I really mean is, “Don’t let me end up in a place like this.” It’s tough to visit, and I can imagine it’s tough to work there too.

But Joyce is blessed, she has a good daughter, a Grace-filled light in the window to come bring her treats, to do things for her that otherwise don’t seem to get done. It’s hard to visit because there is not much conversation to be had anymore, but this is the tough part of a real and living faith.

Who is your light in the window today? We all need to recognize these gifts from God and look up awestruck and thank Him each and every day. His gifts come in all different forms. I pray that I will always be able to see what’s standing right in front of me as His grace…….His love……His mercy.

I have recently restarted Frederick Buechner’s “Listening to Your Life” again. It is a gem of a book……I don’t know how many times I have read through it, but each time I pick it up again I find I’m reading it with new eyes. He is one of the writers I reach for when my feelings are too deep for my own measly words.

Add to that list, Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen and C.S. Lewis.

A final thought from today’s devotional:

“The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of man’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love.” Frederich Buechner, Sept 2, Listening to Your Life

We are all hurtling toward either Heaven or hell. Jesus said that, not me. Each day there is a new chance to change your direction. “You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.” Hebrews 3:13