- Joined
- Feb 9, 2004
- Messages
- 17,081
The REST of the Story - January 19, 2007
Remember me telling you how I thought my purse was stolen? Do I have to admit that I was freaking out a little over losing that purse--especially my calendar? I was so afraid I was going to miss some important appointment or another.
I had gone to the police station to file the report, then to the license bureau to get a new drivers license. A couple of hours later I was picking my kids up from school when I noticed flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I thought, "Man, this is just not my day."
The officer came to my window and as I was handing him my new, hot-off-the-presses license, I noticed he was the very same officer who took my report! What are the odds? I asked him what was up and he said my tags were expired. How could I have missed that? I handed him my license again so he could write up my ticket. There was no arguing with tags that had been expired for two whole months! I could tell it was all clicking in the officer's mind that I was the lady with the "purse incident." He obviously felt sorry for me as he waved my license back at me. "Just so you know they're expired," he said.
It was total purse mercy! The purse incident won me some major ticket grace. Then I found out later that the purse had been misplaced, not stolen! Isn't that sort of sad, weird, happy, unjust and hilarious all at the same time? I know grace is always undeserved, but in this situation the ticket mercy seemed doubly undeserved. I had broken the law, then got a pass on the ticket because of a stolen purse that hadn't really been stolen. Is there such a thing as "undeserved, undeserved grace"? When I think of grace, my mental dictionary almost always turns to a page where "undeserved favor" is inked in as the best definition. Grace is something good that comes to someone who hasn't earned it.
But the grace of God is more than that. It's something gloriously wonderful coming to someone who has earned the exact opposite. Joseph showed God's kind of grace when he met up with the brothers who had tried to murder him, then sold him into what they knew would be a miserable life of slavery and mistreatment. They had stolen his family, his father, and the good life from him and they deserved the worst punishment. Joseph was in just the position to dole out that punishment. They deserved the worst. But what did Joseph give them? He gave them the best. He gave them true grace.
I am one of those brothers. Not just in purse/ticket grace encounter, but in an eternal encounter with God the Father. He was in the position to punish me in themost severeway. I had broken the law and earned the punishment even more completely and convincingly than I had the ticket. But what has he given me? Grace! The best! I love it when the Father teaches me those poignant lessons of his grace. Is it okay if I say that I love it even more when the lessons don't have such a mega-dose of humiliation connected to them? Or if there's a humiliation lesson, truth be told, I like it better when it's someone else's humiliation and not my own. I felt like a total dork when I had to call the police station to report that my earlier report was not a theft but a major goober move on my part.
Happily, even after I reported my gooberness, I still got to keep the ticket grace. I'm loving that picture of the grace of God.
And I'm resting in that picture of his eternal, true grace today. I guess there was an important appointment on my calendar I didn't know about. It was an appointment to think about, dwell on, bask in, and rest completely in his amazing grace.
And that's the REST of the story.
Rhonda Rhea--Speaker, radio personality, humor columnist, author of the fun books:
Amusing Grace, Turkey Soup For The Soul--Tastes Just Like Chicken, Who Put The Cat in the Fridge, and I'm Dreaming of Some White Chocolate. Watch for High Heels In High Places In 2007. www.RhondaRhea.net. Event planners, go to www.FindRhonda.com
Remember me telling you how I thought my purse was stolen? Do I have to admit that I was freaking out a little over losing that purse--especially my calendar? I was so afraid I was going to miss some important appointment or another.
I had gone to the police station to file the report, then to the license bureau to get a new drivers license. A couple of hours later I was picking my kids up from school when I noticed flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I thought, "Man, this is just not my day."
The officer came to my window and as I was handing him my new, hot-off-the-presses license, I noticed he was the very same officer who took my report! What are the odds? I asked him what was up and he said my tags were expired. How could I have missed that? I handed him my license again so he could write up my ticket. There was no arguing with tags that had been expired for two whole months! I could tell it was all clicking in the officer's mind that I was the lady with the "purse incident." He obviously felt sorry for me as he waved my license back at me. "Just so you know they're expired," he said.
It was total purse mercy! The purse incident won me some major ticket grace. Then I found out later that the purse had been misplaced, not stolen! Isn't that sort of sad, weird, happy, unjust and hilarious all at the same time? I know grace is always undeserved, but in this situation the ticket mercy seemed doubly undeserved. I had broken the law, then got a pass on the ticket because of a stolen purse that hadn't really been stolen. Is there such a thing as "undeserved, undeserved grace"? When I think of grace, my mental dictionary almost always turns to a page where "undeserved favor" is inked in as the best definition. Grace is something good that comes to someone who hasn't earned it.
But the grace of God is more than that. It's something gloriously wonderful coming to someone who has earned the exact opposite. Joseph showed God's kind of grace when he met up with the brothers who had tried to murder him, then sold him into what they knew would be a miserable life of slavery and mistreatment. They had stolen his family, his father, and the good life from him and they deserved the worst punishment. Joseph was in just the position to dole out that punishment. They deserved the worst. But what did Joseph give them? He gave them the best. He gave them true grace.
I am one of those brothers. Not just in purse/ticket grace encounter, but in an eternal encounter with God the Father. He was in the position to punish me in themost severeway. I had broken the law and earned the punishment even more completely and convincingly than I had the ticket. But what has he given me? Grace! The best! I love it when the Father teaches me those poignant lessons of his grace. Is it okay if I say that I love it even more when the lessons don't have such a mega-dose of humiliation connected to them? Or if there's a humiliation lesson, truth be told, I like it better when it's someone else's humiliation and not my own. I felt like a total dork when I had to call the police station to report that my earlier report was not a theft but a major goober move on my part.
Happily, even after I reported my gooberness, I still got to keep the ticket grace. I'm loving that picture of the grace of God.
And I'm resting in that picture of his eternal, true grace today. I guess there was an important appointment on my calendar I didn't know about. It was an appointment to think about, dwell on, bask in, and rest completely in his amazing grace.
And that's the REST of the story.
Rhonda Rhea--Speaker, radio personality, humor columnist, author of the fun books:
Amusing Grace, Turkey Soup For The Soul--Tastes Just Like Chicken, Who Put The Cat in the Fridge, and I'm Dreaming of Some White Chocolate. Watch for High Heels In High Places In 2007. www.RhondaRhea.net. Event planners, go to www.FindRhonda.com
