Everyday Grace: The Bitter and The Sweet

God can you just give me one good and pure thing right now? Just one experience that's not marred by sin and brokenness and the past? Will there ever be any sweet without the bitter? 

That's the request I submitted a few days ago. It wasn't the first time.

It's been a year of renewal and repair and sometimes I just want to put all the brokenness behind me. Though I'm grateful beyond words for the gifts I've been given and the redemption I continually taste, I'm selfish. And sometimes I long to have just one gift--an event, a milestone, something special--that feels untouched by the past.

Just one thing, God? You know my story. 

Can't I have celebration without complication? 

Remembrance without regret?  

Hopefulness that's not tinged with fear? 

I'm not asking for perfect and I'm not asking for you to undo what's done. I'm just asking for one, unblemished gift. 

Truth comes through the Spirit and in wise counsel and from that which is written in the Word. 

And sometimes all of these things quietly and slowly weave themselves together. The subtlety should in no way diminish the miraculousness of it all. Grace flies in on the wings of divine whisper and nests softly in the soul...though I'm prone to making the landing difficult. 

The everyday grace I cling to is this: Though tears will be plentiful in this life, we are promised that one day each and every one will be wiped away. Forever. Though we mourn many things--those we love, dashed dreams, failure in a million different forms--we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

And as for my deep desire for just one thing that's untouched by the pain and loss and brokenness of this world? God answered that prayer before the foundations of the earth. I simply have to receive the gift I already have: Jesus. 

Though I cling to other good and lovely things for hope and satisfaction, Christ alone is the one pure gift that will satisfy what this broken world cannot. 

Perhaps your mundane is tainted by memories you'd rather forget. 

Maybe you wonder if you'll ever be able to celebrate anything with reckless abandon. 

If you're hoping for one person or place, one experience or event, one good and pure thing that doesn't feel tinged or tainted, even just a little, by that which you'd rather forget or by even just a shadow of something you can't quite put your finger on...you won't find it in this world. 

But it's ever so freeing to give up and let go.

In each and every moment, the bitter and the sweet, I'm invited to gaze upon Christ, the One who overcame all that is broken, even death itself. He is the perfect we long for, our hope that will never disappoint, a gift we can celebrate with reckless abandon, the good and pure we can cling to today and forevermore. 

Related Verses

Revelation 21:4

Romans 8:21-23

Ephesians 1:3-6

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"Everyday Grace" is a weekly post I've recently begun. It is sort of in the style of a devotional {which is ironic...because I don't typically love devotionals} and a departure from the sort of posts I usually do. It began as a way to record the ways in which God is making the Gospel of Grace "real" to me in everyday ways. This is a way of recording it for myself and sharing with you.