Grace on Father's Day

It's Fathers Day and since the best dad I know is my sweet husband and since he is the best evidence of grace in my life besides salvation, I have been thinking a lot about grace lately. I don't know how I came to be so blessed with this guy. He has filled my home with joy and music, given my boys a role model, loved us all unconditionally, stood by my side through things I can't imagine loving someone through, fought for the dignity of our children who died before birth, encouraged me in all of my crazy ideas (lets just say home schooling is one of the more normal ones), and a million other impossibly grand things and amazingly mundane things that have made my life so much better. But if I had to tell anyone how to meet and marry a guy like him, I don't know what I'd say. I don't have a list or even really a general idea. We were talking about it last night and this is what I came up with:

Well, first you see a guy walk into church, think he's cute and convince a mutual friend to invite him to a prayer group. Then, after you get to know him, attempt suicide and refuse to see a counselor so he has to call you everyday to see if you've made the appointment yet. Once you've done that, it's time to start dating! If possible find someone who has a completely opposite fighting style. He should still be in school as a Jazz Studies major, playing gigs several nights a week, with no real idea what he wants to be when he grows up. A few months later, engagement will seem like a great idea and you should get married as quickly as possible with a lot of drama.

See what I mean? We were a mess collectively and should have destroyed each other sometime around year 2. But it's been almost 16 years and I still think he's the coolest person I know.

I look at the bible though, and that's what God does best. He takes complete disasters of lives and makes them our forefathers of faith. How do you become the father of our faith? Well first you don't have babies until you're really really old, then you get your wife's maidservant pregnant, then you lie and say your wife is really your sister to avoid trouble. How do you start a people for the Lord? You trick your dad into giving you your brother's blessing, fight with an angel, and marry your sister in law first. How do you end up as the one God uses to save a people from starvation? Brag about a dream, get sold into slavery, end up in jail for a crime you didn't commit and be forgotten there. What about if you want to lead your people out of slavery? Oh well then you have to be put into a basket as an infant to avoid being killed at birth, brought up by a heathen, kill someone in anger, and end up talking to a burning bush in the middle of no where.

I could keep on going, but you get the idea. And that's just in the first couple of books of the bible. The thing is, God loves taking what is ugly and useless and making it holy. Sort of the ultimate recycling program. Joel 2:25 "So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,". My life is proof of this. The father of my children is proof of this. I've worked hard to be a good steward of what I was given, but I have no idea how I got it in the first place. Oh wait, yeah I do,

Grace.