As I was driving to work today the snow really did have me thinking about the Lord's grace. Snow is constantly used in the bible referring to how he blots out our sin and makes us white as snow. Have you ever noticed how pretty everything is when it snows? It is beautiful. Even the school I work at, which is the oldest in Arlington, was beautiful today. The trees are beautiful, the ground, where there once was mud, is beautiful. The field where the grass is sparse is now beautiful from the covering of the white snow. It is kind of hard not to think how amazing our Sweet Lord is that he does that for us. He covers us. He covers our sins and makes us white as snow. He forgets what we have done, and remembers how He loved us so much to send His only Son for our forgiveness...to blot out anything you have done today.
As I get older I am realizing how much life does not always look how you planned it. I tend to get disappointed and sometimes act like a little child when this plays out in my life. The Lord has been sweet enough to give me a swift kick in the butt and let me see this. But, it has been ever so lovingly. I have finally gotten to the point again where if I am not in the word, I am longing for it. I have realized how much I miss out on when I do not spend that time with Him. I have also realized how many people around me are hurting. The Lord really has put me in a place that I need to be. I can stamp my feet and be upset that I am in Arlington, versus being in amazing, trendy, cool Dallas where many more things are...or I can be thankful that the Lord has placed me where He has. To be honest, the past couple of weeks I have wondered why the Lord has me where He has me. Why has my life ended up the way it has? Why can't I be around more friends? Why are all my close friends married and I am still single and 'that working girl'? :) This is where the little girl in me comes out. Instead of seeking the Lord and being thankful for this sweet, uninteruppted time with Him, I choose to stamp my feet and complain about the stage of life where He has me. Sad, huh? Ya see, what I am learning, is as humans, we tend to think that the grass is greener on the other side. When, in all actuality, it is probably about the same just with different problems that present themselves in different ways. What I am trying to say is the Lord has really been sweet to me in the past few weeks. For a very long time I got to cry out to Him and tell him all my worries. Literally, crying out to Him. Where in that moment, I was very upset and not understanding what was going on and why I was feeling the way I was feeling, I really did feel the Lord's presence. I just asked Him to show up...to show me where I am. Why he has me here. Since then, the Lord has showed me sooo much through His Word and just through interactions with other people. I have even recieved these emails from parents about my role in thier child's life. Where all that may just seem coincidental, let me tell you my friend, it is not. It is the Lord gently and lovingly showing me He is here. He hasn't left me. He hasn't suddently forgotten where He has placed me. He knows what He is doing.
All this can look like complaining, and where I promise that is not what I am trying to accomplish with this blog, I can see where you might see this. I think my song has been more of a I am single, on a quest to mingle too many times, versus just being happy where I am. The Lord is really showing me Who He is...not who I think He might be. I have such a problem with grace so many times more than not, and so what He is showing me above all is what grace looks like. Showing me what thwarted pride looks like and why I have been in the siutuations I have been in, and just how much He loves me. I seem to forget that He has blotted out my sins. That he doesn't love Ashley five to ten years down the road when I have it together a little bit more, but rather loves me now. That is hard for little miss. perfectionist to accept sometimes. I would rather throw a pity party (because even though I am sad in those times, that is what they are) then see what grace he is offering me. I would rather be mad at myself for what I have messed up doing, or what I am not doing enough of, rather than just being still and accepting grace for my sins. I am still the process of learning this because even though I have known about grace my entire life, I feel like I am learning grace a little differently now. Learning it through teaching, who the Lord has placed in my life, and mainly THE BIBLE. :) I am reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer right now (if you have not read this book I highly recommend it) and he writes this on the knowledge of God:
Nor, I think, would may of us ever naturally say that in the light of the knowledge of God which we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heatbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don't matter. For the plain fact that to most of us they do matter. We live wiht them as our "crosses" (so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them which we frequently do....
"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Jesus Christ," wrote Paul. "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him...I was to know Christ" (Phil 3:7-10). When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or dung (KJV), he means not merely that he does no think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of knowledge of God.
All this to say I am thankful for what the Lord is showing me. I am still ungrateful many more times than not, but I am glad the Lord is choosing to me show me what He is.
I will leave ya with this verse-
I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a midst; return to me, for I have redeemed you.
Isaiah 44:22
Love you guys. Until Later!
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