May God's grace be upon us

We had another lazy morning, this time not getting up until almost 8am. After breakfast, I asked if J wanted to play with our art stuff downstairs since it had been a while. He dropped what he was doing to come. We started out with some coloring. I was showing J how to trace his hand and decorate it but he wanted to scribble instead. He also liked playing with some Sesame Street stickers and "pancake playdoh" he calls it. I went in the laundry room for a minute and he came in too. He'd open the washer door, talk a little bit, then close it and walk out. Then he'd come back and do it again. I asked him what he was doing and he said "J's clothes wash". Cute.

In my devotional time, I continued on in Luke 2. It says that Jesus grew; he became strong, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. I wonder what it means to have the grace of God upon you? To take that a little deeper, I started with Google putting in that exact phrase and came up with 131,000 responses! One of the sights I found shared that there are two sides of the coin to grace. On the one side is grace which means unmerited favor, compassion. This is the grace that we are saved by. The other side of grace is the divine power and ability God imparts to us to operate in what the Lord has given us to do. It's the second definition that fits the verse above. How God was equipping Jesus for the work he had for him to do. I've not really thought of grace in that way before, so that helps. Joseph and Mary took Jesus (now 12 years old) to the Festival of the Passover in Jerusalem. When Mary and Joseph left, Jesus stayed behind. It took his parents 3 days, but they finally found him in the temple. Jesus was talking with the elders who were amazed at his understanding. When questioned by his parents, Jesus was taken aback asking why they were searching for him, don't they know he had to be about his Father's house (business)? Here we actually see some of the work that God had equipped him to do, even at the age of 12.

We're starting a new book in my women's study called Is This All There is to Life by Ray Stedman. This study is on the book of Ecclesiastes. I've wanted to study this book of the bible for awhile. It's L's favorite plus it's intriguing because we all search for meaning in our lives. Ray says the book asks the question, "Is there a key to continual delight and joy in our lives?" It'll be neat to find out if the book answers that question!

We had a guest speaker at our church today who spoke on Revelation 2:1-7. He used the church in Ephesus "forsaking their first love" as a way to warn us of the temptation we have as Christ followers to get to a point in our faith where we feel pretty good about ourselves and how much we know. That we can fall into being arrogant, forgetting our first love and begin looking down on others. He spoke about agape love which we find defined in 1 Corinthians 13. This is how God loves us and calls us to love others. This was good to think about.

J did pretty well at dinner tonight. We went out after church with our friends to McD's. I brought food for J from home and stayed away from fries. I realize if I get them, that's the only thing he will eat. We played some puzzles and daddy played his guitar and then it was J's bedtime. Tonight, after bedtime prep, singing over J and saying prayers I just rocked him and held him in my arms with my eyes closed. For those few moments, I just quieted myself and soaked in the love a mother has for her child; experiencing the blessing that this little one is.