Laced With Grace

I have a neat little testimony to share with you all.  Here in New Zealand we’re going through a rather nasty recession…companies are going bust, people are losing their properties to mortgagee sales, everyone is finding it hard to cope financially including us.

Thankfully both dh and I are employed but last week after paying some big bills off we had no money for good. I bake goodies from home for my children to put in their lunches and I try to budget as best I can by buying sale items etc when we shop but anyway getting back to the point…I was freaking out as to what I could put on the table for dinner and in the lunchboxes when my boss approached me and gave me $25 NZ for coming into work in the weekends to meet clients etc and for all the helping out I do.

Wow! Not only was I able to buy a few things from the shop to feed my family but dh and I were blown away literally!

Isn’t God awesome? He does this again and again and He never ceases to amaze me.

God doesn’t just care about the big things in our lives – he also cares about the little things too  :-)

Hasn’t God got a wonderful way of teaching us exactly how He wants us to be through ordinary everyday situations?

At the office I work in we have a furniture removal truck available for hire and late that day I was ready to leave. I was tired, it had been a long week and I just wanted to get home. Suddenly I had a man phone wanting to use the truck for the weekend so I explained to him the rates and what our closing time was. So I waited…and waited…and waited for him to turn up then I left. 10 minutes later he called me on my cellphone – apparently he’d gotten stuck in the roadworks on the way over which meant I’d have to go back to work and give him the keys and the paperwork etc.  By this stage I was pretty darn grumpy and my attitude reflected that - oh shame on me!

After returning home to cook dinner and attend to my three children I realised just what I’d done. We only live 5 minutes from my office and the process had taken me less than 15 minutes so it really shouldn’t have been a big deal to begin with. I realised how pitiful my tone of voice had been and how impatient I was with him. eek!

God doesn’t want us to be this way with other people. We’re suppose to be his ambassadors or representatives. What if people see my grumpiness and think “Well, if that’s what Christians are then I’m glad I’m not one”. How does God want us to act?

Micah 6:8
“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (NIV)

I think that says it in a nutshell don’t you?

Lord, help me to have a different attitude this week. Give me patience, tolerance and understanding towards other people so that I can show others who you are. Amen.

I have to confess, I’m really into researching different parts of my family genealogy. On one side we have my grandmother’s family who are from Ireland and Scotland and on the other we have my grandad’s family who came from Spain. Getting information is really hard and although I have names and dates finding out more about my ancestors definitely isn’t an easy task. One of my mother’s cousins put together a book of their family that she’d been working on for over 15 years and it’s still not yet finished – apparently there was a King and Queen of Spain in the 12th century mentioned too.

Psalm 33:11
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

On the flip side I have the knowledge of knowing that no matter where my roots come from God made me and you in His image. He created me to be exactly who he made me to be. I have the blood of Jesus there to protect me, I have God’s grace, mercy and love. I may not know where my extended family came from originally but praise God that He knows every inch of me. He knows me inside out, He knows where I am at all times and thanks to Him I can pass on his good news to future generations through my children.

Ask yourself, what knowledge and foundations are you preparing for the generations to come after you’ve gone?