Tag: grace

The Imperfect Servanthood of Motherhood

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I’ve been thinking about servanthood which may as well be a synonym for motherhood. The tasks of motherhood are tasks of service: making meals, refilling cups, cleaning spills, wiping butts, re-wiping the butts that were inadequately wiped. From morning to night, I am a servant. Too often though, I am a grumbling servant, a proud servant, a servant who doesn’t want to serve anymore.

Philippians 2 describes Jesus in three forms: God, man, and servant. As God, He had the right to demand to be served, yet He came as man so that He could serve us. He had every right to grasp, but instead, he surrendered. He had every right to demand, but instead, He gave. “Have this mind among you…” Paul says.

I’m praying I can become a more humble and joyful servant, but I’m also really thankful I don’t have to earn or prove anything. I’m thankful that the Gospel isn’t merely “Here’s Christ’s example. Go do it,” but “Here’s Christ’s righteousness. He did what you could never do for you.” I can never be the servant Jesus is, but I can pursue growth out of freedom and gratitude. We should want to serve better because Christ has served us…but we can also receive grace when we serve imperfectly because we have been so perfectly served by Him.

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Motherhood Musings on Juggling and Struggling

emilyschuch7 Comments

“Struggling isn’t failing.” I stop and say the words out loud to myself as I’m cleaning up the kitchen. 

My mind feels chaotic as the many things I need to accomplish for the day come at me like missiles, missiles that circle back around every few minutes to land again. Get my son to piano lessons. Finish school for the day. Shower. Maybe. Schedule that appointment. Call about getting the baby’s shots up to date. Put on makeup before my doctor’s appointment so I don’t look like a cast member of The Walking Dead. Everyone needs baths…and their nails cut. Why are there so many fingernails that insist on growing?

The chaos in my mind is mirrored by the chaos in my house. There are crayons. Everywhere. In the corners of the kitchen. By the stairs. I’m convinced they’re multiplying. Dress up has been discarded on the floor. Magnet blocks all over the living room. There are mac n cheese noodles stuck to the floor under the three-year-old’s chair. The lid to the coffee creamer wasn’t shut when I shook it and it spilled everywhere in front of the refrigerator. It is now a giant sticky spot that is collecting dirt and hair and who knows what else. I need to mop…I need to vacuum…I need a maid. 

It’s too much. There’s not enough time. Not enough energy. Not enough of me.

I am struggling. And it feels like failing. 

I’ve never been sure if I should call myself a perfectionist. My disorganized drawers would suggest no, but the meltdown I had after my first B would suggest yes. Sometimes, less than perfect doesn’t bother me, but others, it feels devastating.

Why is it so devastating? I’ve been trying to figure that out. I think ultimately it’s because it means that I am lacking. Lacking means deficiency and deficiency means failure. That is the path my mind naturally takes and that is why I find myself talking to myself in the kitchen, trying to take the thoughts out and examine them to see where I’ve gone wrong. 

What if the lacking was supposed to lead me somewhere else? To someone else?

We are uncomfortable with our limits. We balk at the reality that we only stretch so far before we break. My struggling feels like failure, but it’s actually just a reminder that I am a finite being, bound by time and space and the ways God has made me. It’s actually just God telling me I am not enough and this is a good thing to remember because it points me to the One who is. He exposes weakness not in condemnation, but love. He gives me more than I can handle so that He can give me more of Himself. 

The struggle is where He meets us. It’s where He pries our battered, ruined self-sufficiency from our hands and says, “I have something better.” 

“Struggling isn’t failing,” I say again. “It’s a gift.”

“She is clothed with strength and dignity.” And also probably armed with wipes and coffee…

Photo cred: my 3 yr old

Easter Musings: Pursued by Grace

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Our annual celebration of Easter is drawing near and so I have been thinking on what it is all about:  the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  When I think on what it means for me personally and look back on my life thus far, I am struck by the fact that my story is a story of grace from beginning to end.  To quote the Psalmist, the Lord’s goodness and love have followed me and will follow me all the days of my life (Psalm 23).

It is one thing to say that we have found God and quite another thing to say that He has found us. Yet when we really consider our Gospel story, we cannot deny that that is really what has happened and that it makes it all the more wonderful and powerful.  I did not pursue God, but He has pursued me.  I did not follow after God’s love, but it has followed after me.

The love and grace of God have pursued us from the beginning.  Our frames were not hidden from Him when He made us in the secret place, as we were woven together in our mother’s wombs, His eyes saw our unformed bodies.  Indeed, “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:14-15).  

He has followed us along every step of our path.  No, he has determined every step of our path with wisdom and love (Proverbs 16:9).  And when our feet have traveled down sinful ways that His holiness forbid Him go, He followed us instead to our rightful place of judgment, condemnation, and punishment.  We find that before we even came to be, His eyes were on us, His grace aimed at us, and His love compelled Him to follow us, nay replace us, on our cross.

This is Easter.  This is why we celebrate, because His grace has pursued us so persistently and His love enveloped our lives so completely that we are completely His.  “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).  “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).

 

The High Cost of Free Grace

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The title of this post may seem puzzling.  How can grace be both free and costly?  That is simply contradictory.  Yet I think that this is a paradox that we see in Scripture and which I have been trying to work out in my head.  We receive salvation through the free gift of God’s grace and yet the fact that it is free does not mean that it will cost us nothing to receive it.  How can this be?

That we receive salvation as a free gift is undoubtedly true.  Scripture tells us, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).  This is a pivotal point of the Gospel.  Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and the faith which saves us?  It is a gift.  A gift, by definition, is something you cannot earn or attempt to pay for.  For then it would be cease to be a gift.  This point Paul emphasizes so that we can all understand that none of us can boast.  If we want salvation, we must receive it humbly, giving all the glory to God.

In this sense then, grace is free.  With all my works, I could never have been good enough to earn it.  With all my money, I could never have afforded it.  And the real truth is that with all my sin and wickedness, I did not even want it.  Yet here I stand in the grace of God. It is free and it has freed me.

However, salvation is not “free” in the same way that the samples at Sam’s Club are free.  That is free in the sense of instant gratification with no cost and no lifestyle implications.  The offer of the Gospel is very different.  Mercy is weightier stuff.  It lays claim to our lives.  Christ did not die merely to dole out forgiveness to passersby, but to purchase souls.  If we want His grace, we must be ready to give our devotion.  If we want His life, we must be prepared to surrender ours.

In a strange sense, the grace of God would be less costly if it was less free.  If God merely wanted our money, our good deeds, our lip service, I think many would be more willing to take His offer because we would still be able to retain the one thing we all cringe at relinquishing: the thrones of our hearts.  For if the Gospel is really free, if God has really in His sovereignty, reached down and saved me, changing the trajectory of my life from eternal wrath to eternal life, then there is a very great cost. I cannot be the person I was because God has changed my very identity from child of wrath to child of God.  I cannot live as Lord of my own life because because Christ has bought and paid for the right to be not just my Savior, but my Lord.  Yes, grace is free, but its implications are weighty.  I am not my own.  For grace has made me His.

This should cause us to consider the offer of the Gospel with due sobriety.  We should marvel at the glory of free grace and yet consider the cost of receiving it.  We must hear the warning of Christ Himself: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25-27). These are sobering words indeed.  They tell us that being a disciple of Christ may cost us everything, our dearest relationships or even our very lives.

Indeed, many who have chosen to follow Christ, have been led by Christ down paths of suffering that they would never have chosen for themselves. This is the cost of free grace: complete submission and avowal that we will follow Christ wherever He may lead.  Yet, the cost does not come without promise and the promise is very, very good.  The promise is that no matter where Christ may take us or what He may ask us to do, it will be worth it.

Paul understood the promise.  He tells us that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).  And in Philippians, he vows to embrace the cost and sufferings of belonging to Christ, even calling it rubbish, all that He might gain Christ and be found in Him (Philippians 3:8-9).  Paul understood that there was a cost, but that whatever the cost might be, it was simply incomparable to the prize.

Thus we see that grace is free and yet costly, that the cost is both great and yet so transient in the grand scheme of things as to ultimately be counted as nothing.  Let us then consider with sobriety the weighty offer of the Gospel and the far-reaching implications it has for our lives, but let us also consider that if a cost must be paid, something must be given in return.  Those who do count the cost and consider the worth of the prize will see that it is so much more than worth it.  For ultimately, following Christ must necessarily lead us to Christ and Christ Himself is the source of life and salvation and the treasure who is worth more than any price.