May We Never Forget His Grace

by Mrs. Gabrielle
from Virtuous Daughters, December 2013~Volume 13, Number 9

I was going to get an ultrasound to find out the due date of my second child. As I sat in the waiting room, thumbing through a woman’s health magazine, I couldn’t help but notice the other people come in and out.
 
A young, married couple was looking at pictures of their new little one that they were going to have very soon. Another woman in her fifties sat rigidly, waiting to have a mammogram. But the woman that came in next caught my attention.

She was in her early twenties at the oldest, with blond hair. A little girl about six followed her in along with the woman’s rough, very grumpy looking boyfriend. The woman was wearing flip-flops, black sweat pants, and a yellow tank top, all of which were very dirty. Her tank top left a couple inch gap between its hem and the waistline of her pants. You could hear her chewing her gum loudly as she spoke to the receptionist.
 
“I’m a couple minutes late, sorry. The bus was slow and he—” she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of her boyfriend—had to stop for a smoke.”
 
“I wasn’t the only one,” her boyfriend muttered loudly.
 
The receptionist eyed the couple critically. “You are not ‘a couple minutes late,’” she said coldly, “You are fifteen minutes late and your appointment is over. You will have to make a new appointment for a different day.”
 
The woman looked helpless, and her boyfriend scowled darkly. She quickly made her appointment and the three of them shuffled out. You could hear her boyfriend yelling as they walked out the hall and down the stairs.
 
My heart went out to that woman—she was my age, but our lives could not be more different. I looked down at my hands and remembered the time in my early teens when I struggled so much with being different. How I wanted to wear things, and do things, and have a boyfriend—just like all the other girls.
 
But God in His mercy reached down His loving hand to me. If it were not for His grace and love, that woman could have been me!
 
I fought to keep the tears from welling up in my eyes, but that evening at prayer meeting I couldn’t stop them.
 
I cried as I thought of that woman I saw. I prayed that God would show her the same mercy He showed me; that He would save her soul.
 
I cried as I thought of Christ’s love and compassion for me. I did not deserve to be raised in a godly family; to have such wonderful parents and siblings. To have the best husband in the world, a precious son, and another baby on the way. To have wonderful in-laws, friends, and a church.

But He blessed me with all that anyway! I don’t deserve it any more than the woman in the dirty yellow tank-top, but He freely gave it to me!
 
No matter how good we have been, or how much we have sinned, we could never deserve any of what He has done for us. It is so easy when we are raised in a Christian family and having never done anything “really bad” in our lives, to look down on the other “sinners” out in the world.
 
But, may we all never forget what we would be without Christ’s love and grace towards us.
 
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8